r/chaseblissaudiophiles

I know this is a stupid thing to get hung up on but it feels important to me. Maybe it isn't stupid, since music is aesthetic and the aesthetics of the pedal spill over into what you do with it.

Anyway I'm going to buy a Bad Mood but I can't decide which colour. Both colours are complementary to my pink Mood Mk2, but in different ways. In my head, the red one feels like the "angry" counterpart to the pink Mood, and seems to lead down a path to giant saturated ambient noise music like Yellow Swans, but the grey one suggests itself as the "night side" counterpart, and is suggestive of making sedative, nocturnal ambient stuff like Mount Shrine.

Perhaps it won't help me but perhaps it will. I'm wondering which colour you've bought and particularly the aesthetic impulse or associations that made your mind up, and the kinds of music you imagine yourself making with it.

should i aim for the waza??

I was reorganising the studio today and my Mood pedal fell off my desk! Argh!! Any suggestions what I can do? I have a crash repair painter friend, who said he might be able to paint match and spot paint it. What do you think? 🤦🏻‍♂️

INTRO

This makes the fourth pedal in the Chase Bliss world that I’ve reviewed. Previous ones can be found here:

• Clean
• Generation Loss MKII
• Mood MKII

Like those previous reviews, I’ll start with the disclaimer that Joel sent me the pedal because he’s a rad dude, and no money or promise of a good review changed hands. In fact, he sent me the Lost + Found from the first batch run, and between becoming a new dad and losing my dad I am beyond late in the months getting my thoughts on paper, so I’m not particularly useful for anyone’s marketing campaigns even if that was the case (and it’s not).

That out of the way, let’s go.

WHAT IS THE LOST + FOUND?

CBA’s marketing material describes it as a multi-effects unit. While yes, it is, I think a more clear description of the L+F is that it is “a sampler platter of the best Chase Bliss flavours you know, plus some you haven’t heard before”.

Many of the effects in this box seem (to my ears) to trace their origins in previous offerings:

• Useful Ambience: reminds me of the clock-noise reverb found on Mood MKII
• Grain Tumbler: reminds me of the micro-looper on Mood MKII
• Gen Lite: is well, Generation Loss MKII
• Glue: the alt setting in the “Blend” knob? Well the saturated sound reminds me of the dirt setting in Clean.
• Pinging Phaser: I’m going to guess bears some resemblance to the Wombtone based on demos, but I have never played one myself

And of course there are plenty of new ones, like Spectral Modulator, Sympathetic Resonator, etc.

WHO IS THIS PEDAL FOR?

If you’re someone who can’t decide on your first Chase Bliss pedal, honestly I think this is a great start. You get some “mini effect” versions of their other dedicated pedals, a host of other new things, and if you decide you like those settings and want to go deeper, well then you have a pretty good feeling of where your next investment should be.

If you already own a few CBA pedals, there’s definitely enough new in here to warrant the purchase. BUT! There’s also a convenience factor here. I love the Gen Loss MKII, but I don’t frequently use it. If I was short on board space, I think I’d be perfectly happy with the Gen Lite setting on L+F and save the board space. You could comfortably create presets that mirror some other CBA pedals and then just use the L+F as your CBA driver. And the real special thing in this pedal are the three different routing options that give you a multitude of convenient ways to build new interactive effects without needing to physically move pedals on your board. 

NOTES ON HOW I TRIED TO REVIEW THIS

I’ll be honest here and say part of the reason it took me months to write this review is that I couldn’t decide how to review it. Yea, there’s 12 effects, but there are a LOT of combinations due to the fact that there are 3 routing options. Effect A can go into B, B into A, or A and B in parallel. And depending on how you order the effects the sounds are wildly different. It’s a very interactive pedal and so how do you get a clear picture of what’s “good” without trying them all?

I’m shit at math, but that totals to roughly 144 series combinations, and 78 in parallel, so a total of 222 possible effect combinations in this pedal. That’s insane.

So I did the insane thing and tried all the potential combinations. I also tried to rank the “best” combinations to see if I could detect patterns of which effects were the “best” in the box.

I started the rankings and got through about 70 in my chart and decided to scrap the whole thing. Because what the actual hell is “best”? What’s good for me not might be good for you. For instance, I’m a pretty tame player, but someone like Cyberattack is probably going to like the settings (or find use for) ones I don’t like. 

In the end I settled on this: I created a series of presets (see the photos) that utilize all 12 of the effects in the box in some combination. I did this to show that no matter what effect it is, no matter whether it didn’t initially appeal to me, I found a way to make it musical for my needs.

So yes, there are effects in the box I find easier to like, more to my taste, etc but in the end I think you’ll find many settings that work for you and plenty of room to explore.

GENERAL HOW TO USE

This is important: To get the most of this pedal, you need to play in stereo. I know not everyone has a stereo rig or can afford one, but of all the Chase Bliss I’ve tried, this one deserves it the most. The stereo implementation of the effects is so goddamn good.

In the suite of effects, I found the delays and verbs the easiest to implement. The modulations vary in usefulness, some are harder to use than others.

Glue has a huge impact on the way two sounds interact. I feel like the manual doesn’t stress this enough, so I’ll scream it here. You cannot decide whether an effect is working for you or not until you have tried the full sweep of the glue setting. 

Given the variables in this pedal, here’s how I experimented and designed sounds:

1. Dial the individual left or right half of the pedal independently to find a sound you like
2. Put both effects on
3. Adjust Glue
4. Adjust Routing
5. Adjust Blend
6. Fine Tune Glue and Blend

I’ll say this last note on design, I really appreciate how the left half of the Modify knob is one effect and the right half is another. It’s a really clever way of doubling the effects available without doubling the selector switches, and rarely (in any pedal) do I find I need the full sweep of a knob anyways.

Oh, and don’t forget that you can swap the left and right sides using the dipswitches, so you could use this as a dual reverb pedal. Or a dual synthesizer pedal. Etc etc.

THE EFFECTS

I’m not going to break down all the details of these effects. The manual has that. I’m going to describe how I like to set them.

1A. Slow Verb: This reverb has tasteful modulation on the repeats, and like the Mood, you can smear the delay repeats into reverb, giving you the ability for this to function as a delay or verb. I particularly like swapping the right footswitch so I’ve got 1A on the left and 1A on the right half of the pedal. It sounds great to set one side as a long reverb with the other side as delay going into it, and blend to hear more of the delay signal than the verb. This setup works equally well with 1B.

1B. Useful Ambience: I use it with Time maxed because you get clock noise like the mood, and damn is that a cool digital artifact reverb. That said, the sound of 1B and 1A can be hard to distinguish on some settings. But using 1B as a delay separates the two more clearly: on 1B’s delay mode it's more randomly percussive (not exactly dotted 8ths) whereas 1A is straight repeats.

2A. Orchestral Swell: Here is one of the effects that had less settings where I loved it - it’s inclined to get pretty boomy if you’re not careful. I set the Tone all the way down, set the pitch to -1 octave, and then basically set it as a moodier reverb. The more aggressive settings were not for me. But maybe they will be for you.

2B. Pitch Repeater: Honestly I’m using this as an excellent stereo spread delay that bounces left and right. It functions as a pretty clean delay since it doesn’t have the significant modulation like the 4A Tape Echo has. So a bit funny I’m not using it as a pitch shifter. I set the pitch setting to the same octave, and then Time setting to 2pm to get a stochastic delay. Feed into reverb and you get a jittery delay verb.

3A. Pinging Phaser: This is indeed a cartoonish phaser as per the manual, and it gets extreme quite quickly. For me, using it in a musical context means keeping the Resonance below noon. With the Resonance down, it’s a clean and very usable phaser. Beyond noon, I’m not sure how I’d use it in a musical context. That said, there is a cool effect when using an expression pedal on the Poles (Modify) knob and you get a plink plink computer sound going up and down (as long as Time setting at minimum while Resonance is maxed). That would do well as a sound effect to sample.

3B. Spectral Modulator: This is one of the modulation effects I initially had trouble with. It’s got great stereo movement when the resonance is cranked, but I had a hard time using this sound due the harsh highs. I didn’t like the middle ground Tone setting - I had to turn the tone down to about 9 o clock to get the shrill highs tamed but it was still a bit too in your face for me. The tip in the book about useful ambience going to this is a good one, as this effect is hard to use on its own (I could see synths getting a bit more use of this as when I played straight arpeggios it gave a neat movement). One method I had to get around the twinkling waterfall sound was to crank the Time to max. Then, it moves so fast that I don’t hear the twinkling - it instead functions as a stereo bouncing tremolo slicing up your sound. One of my presets below uses this to good effect, and I was like damn. I do like this.

4A. Tape Echo: Oh man what a great delay. Excellent stereo spread. Interestingly with the Stability (Alt) all the way left at “New” you get an echo with a lot of verb. With Tone at noon I get a sparkle sound instead of what I would call “old” Tape. I hear more of a digital artifact that while not a Tape sound, I do really like. My favourite is dark and moody repeats with Tone at 9 or below, and Stability at 9. It’s a really great delay, and because it has a bit of verb to my ears, you could do both with this one setting, leaving you a footswitch free to do a third effect. 

4B. Grain Tumbler: is something very special, and in fact feeding one Grain Tumbler into another (by doing a Left Side Swap) is amazing for building and building and building. The Grain Tumbler reminds me of a more approachable version of the Mood’s mini looper half. When I use the Grain Tumbler on both sides, I set one side as long repeats and feed it into the other side as short repeats. Creates an awesome glitchy pad that I throw into an external looper and then play cutting distortion lines over. Interestingly, with the Alt (Grain Shape) setting turned all the way left, this setting reminds me a bit of the Ventris Offpsring setting which was my fav on that pedal (but I sold it) - very rhythmic. All said, I like Grain Shape best at noon.

5A. Impulse Synthesizer: In the pantheon of synth pedals on the market this one is not … great.  It’s quite inaccurate tracking, particularly with low gain input, so I recommend a boost with single coils or use humbuckers. If your input gain is weak it will hunt for the correct note and sometimes miss by a semi-tone which doesn’t sound fantastic. It also does not track in real time, no matter how fast you set it. To make this a workable effect, you need to be doing chords, slow transitions, and not fast leads. This is best used for synth pads and that’s how I found a way to make this useful. I keep Portamento as fast as possible, the Attack/Release as fast as possible, and then Texture to taste (I personally like Mellow the best). Season with a bit of verb and call it a day.

5B. Sympathetic Resonator: is quite cool, and while inaccurate tracking in a similar way to 5A, I find it one where it’s touch responsive in a way to make it musical and where I get a lot out of it by playing to the pedal. I set Octave setting down all left at -1 octave, and Time and Modify at 3pm. This gives you a swell that latches only when you play a chord loudly. So I play a loud chord, pick a line under it to my heart’s content (that it doesn’t grab) and then strum when it’s time for the next chord change. Oh and Mix at 9 or 10 o clock to tame the resonant swell. Only weak spot here that (I think) relates to the tracking is that I find it detunes the chord as it’s being released by the algo.

6A. Ensemble Expander: Honestly one of my favourite simple choruses on the market. I love it at max Depth, max Number of Voices, and a Rate at 9 o clock. The stereo spread is subtle and ace. This chorus would fit in anyone’s “normal” rig. However, I can’t help but think the “Number of Voices” diagram is wrong in the manual? When fully to the right, I get a reasonable sounding chorus which would make me think it’s 2 voices instead of the labelled 6, but when fully dialled left (written as 2 voices and should be tamer) it’s nuts. If you’re still reading at this point let me know if you experience the same.

6B. Gen Lite: Ever wanted the lo-fi thing but use it so rarely that you don’t want to dedicate the pedalboard space? That’s where this module comes in. BUT. You need to use the “Glue” setting to really get this mode into the full Generation Loss MK2 tonal territory. If you just use the Rate/Depth/Crinkles knobs, yes, you will get tape behaviour but it will miss the magic that comes from the different high/low pass filters that make up the EQ profiles in the Gen Loss Mk2. So in order to approximate that, you need to crank the Glue. Noon is a fine place to start, but I’d say you need to max all the way right to get this thing to sound like a proper Gen Loss model. Wonderful stereo movement to the thing too.

TLDR SUMMARY

This is a great pedal that will appeal to new people wanting to dip their toes into the Chase Bliss world but unable to decide which one they want first, while also offering up new sounds and brilliant routing options to long-time users that make it a welcome addition. The delays, verbs, and sounds that are similar to other best selling CBA pedals are the easiest to access for playable tones, and while some of the modulation effects in here are better than others, I still found a way to make everything in this box musical.

SUGGESTED PRESETS

Scroll through the images in the top of this post for the settings, and give me a shout if any questions.