Chase Bliss blooper

The Chase Bliss blooper is a stereo looper pedal that treats looping as a creative instrument rather than a simple record-and-playback tool. Delicious Audio describes it as "a looper with tons of creative and, dare we say, imaginative features," hosted in the classic Chase Bliss Audio compact case with 6 knobs, two footswitches and a large set of toggle and DIP switches¹. Inside, an XMOS DSP processor does the work, and the design goal, as the company put it, was "to merge high-quality looping with creative manipulation, allowing you to steer your loops to new and extraordinary places"¹.

The pedal first appeared as a prototype at the Winter NAMM show in January 2019²³¹, went to Kickstarter in September 2019, and was finished and shipping toward the end of December 2019¹². Its list price is $499⁴.

What it does: looping with creative manipulation

Most loopers on the market record a phrase and play it back. Guitar.com noted at launch that the blooper "does have some incredibly cool features that set it apart from other loopers on the market," including normal, additive and one-shot sampling modes, full MIDI implementation, and a repeats knob for fading loops or for using the pedal like a tap-tempo delay². On the practical side there is loop saving, eight layers of undo and redo, and external syncing¹.

The heart of the pedal is Additive mode, which allows you to record sound modifiers directly into the loop like any other overdub¹. That is the core idea: instead of adding effects after the loop, the blooper bakes manipulation into the loop itself, so each pass can push the material somewhere new. Pedal of the Day found that the modifiers "add in different functions to your loop, creating entire new sonic worlds and experimental music we've not found anywhere else"⁶.

The controls

The blooper follows the Chase Bliss format: knobs on top, toggle and DIP switches for configuration. The six main knobs were labeled Ramp, Cross, Drift, Stability, Mod A and Mod B on the prototype⁸.

Pedal of the Day was especially taken with the Layers knob, calling it "the greatest looper pedal addition EVER, as it lets you turn on and off your different recorded layers just by turning the knob"⁶.

There is also an Ext. function, where you can control the Left switch with any normally-open momentary switch, for an additional footswitch option⁶.

Layers, overdubs and modifiers

The blooper can record a total of 16 overdubs⁷. The layer structure works like this:

• The first 7 overdubs are each stored on their own layer⁷.
• The 8th is a "super layer" that stacks up all the rest of your overdubs⁷.
• You cannot isolate the audio on just one layer⁷.

The Bank A and Bank B DIP switches give you access to two different sets of modifiers⁷, so a single pedal can hold two different manipulation setups ready to switch between. In Additive mode, whichever modifiers are active get recorded straight into the loop as an overdub¹.

Connections: MIDI, expression and CV

The pedal has full MIDI implementation², plus a connection for an expression pedal or CV in the housing². The prototype also showed a three-position switch labeled 1,2,3 in the middle, a switch for MIDI, and a switch for EXP/CV (4,5,6) for routing these connections⁸.

A note on the USB connection: Chase Bliss says some USB cables will not make a good connection with blooper, or will not transfer data, and recommends using the included USB cable for the BLIP interface connection where possible⁷.

Where it came from

The blooper's creative features were born from a collaboration between the Minneapolis pedal company and pedal videographer Knobs¹. The Kickstarter campaign launched in September 2019 and reached over $216,000, far higher than the initial goal of $100,000². A firmware v2 update followed after release¹.

Chase Bliss's own comparison pages give some context on where the pedal sits in the lineup: the company describes blooper as "loop-focused" and notes that the MOOD pedal, which emerged during blooper's development, was "an outlet for us, compared to blooper's neediness"⁹.

What reviewers said

Guitar.com's reviewer, reviewing the pedal's aims, wrote that "it absolutely excels at its aim to combine high-fidelity looping with deep creative manipulation"⁴. Gearnews characterized it at launch as "a premium-priced experimental looping pedal"⁵, which matches its $499 list price⁴. Pedal of the Day's verdict centered on the Layers knob and the modifiers' ability to create sonic territory the reviewer had not found in other loopers⁶.

Videos

Click to load

Click to load

Click to load

Questions