I’ve followed tkog / The King of Gear for many years now - and have had the Mini Glitch in the reference collection for quite a while - a really cool and relatively simple but impactful Micro-Sampler. I believe that first materialised properly in 2018 - where I’m aware there were a few earlier sort of prototype versions before then - while I think the final design occurred some time in and around 2018.
Around a year later, tkog then introduced its Oxford Drive - which I understand is an ...
The final arrangement for the year - all the pedals that impressed the most!
These are just different enclosure artwork editions where all else is the same as for the standard editions - just the graphics are different. Note that my background visual here is very apt gold confetti!
Both limited edition anniversary pedals retail for the same standard price of $399 and equivalent in your local currency. Of course available for order right now from the Chase Bliss Webstore. Generally there is a 10% Anniversary discount on most pedals on the site - while some exceptions...
This article was originally suggested by my now good friend Henry Kaiser - leading guitar and guitar effects experimentalist and prolific producer and recording artist. He’s been a long-term friend of Toshihiko Tanabe - of Tanabe.TV fame and thought I should do one of my pedal roundups on Japanese Boutique Pedal Builders.
I had long intended to do a feature on Japanese Pedal Makers - but could not decide on the context or format - as there are so many notable brands. Upon Henry’s suggestion...
Since the Mood is Chase Bliss’s all-time bestseller as far as I’m aware - it makes perfect sense that they would do the same kitchen-sink exercise on this device as was fairly recently done for the Generation Loss MKII.
Superficially - at least facia-wise everything seems to look largely the same bar the major colour-change - with still the same labels present on the pedal’s front :
Controls - Time, Mix (Ramp), Length, Modify (Spatial / Wet), Clock : 2K-64K, Modify (Looper), Modifiers (...
What a magnificent start to the year - I don’t think I’ve ever had such a strong January selection - I could almost stick a pin in it and take the rest of the year off! Several of these slots won’t see much change between now and the end of the year - and so impressive is this latest batch of additions - that I can’t really see what might be improved in order to replace most of those.
I was not expecting to add the Eventide H90 quite so quickly - while the Hologram Microcosm has always ...
As contemporary mainstream music output becomes ever more polished there is a growing trend towards dissonance and imperfections at the same time. We’ve seen a number of recent pedals with White Noise features and/or scramble type filters - that somewhat deliberately ’mess up’ your sound!
The recent Beautiful Noises Exploder is just one such example, and Fairfield Circuitry have somewhat carried that sort of thing forward with AM / FM Radio Frequency / RFI Modulation on their new Roger That...
Another healthy selection - Modutility covering Modulation, Pitch and Utility pedal categories - for one of the strongest selection to date. Some of the pedals here are truly stellar, and I have a little over half here already in the collection.
I’m unlikely to ever get all the pedals featured here, but there are several already earmarked for acquisition in 2023 - with the Eventide H90 at the top of that list.
The ones I don’t yet own, or may never own even - include :
Readers have heard me refer to my ’Infinite Wishlist’ - which consists of a mix of new releases (Weeks & Months), relatively recent releases (Years), and older releases (Decades) that I either missed out on or was oblivious to at the time. What’s special about this process and exercise - like many things in life - and reminiscent of my DJ-ing days when it was all about a very specific version of remix - the same is the case with pedals - where the pedal reference and particular iteration is...
Ever since Tom Majeski’s move to Chase Bliss we have been excitingly awaiting the latest evolution of his Generation Loss platform. And the recent announcement is every bit as good as we had hoped - with a tonne of new features compared with the previous edition - and most importantly now including 10+ Tape Models onboard, and Full Stereo Ins and Outs courtesy of TRS cables.
I’m not going to break down every facet of the new edition, but rather concentrate on the innovations - and what is ...