Chase Bliss Brothers AM

The Chase Bliss Brothers AM is a dual overdrive pedal made in collaboration with Analog Man, built as a tribute to Analog Man's King of Tone overdrive¹. At its heart are two identical, multi-mode gain channels that can each run as boost, overdrive or distortion, which you can stack, combine and switch, plus a treble booster circuit based on the Beano Boost¹². Chase Bliss describes the pedal as "a stack of sunny saturation that always manages to sound just right"¹.

The collaboration pairs Chase Bliss Audio's Joel Korte with Mike Piera, aka Analog Man, and was five-plus years in the making²³. It launched in April 2025, with the first batch selling out almost instantly and a second batch following⁴. The pedal is a variant of Chase Bliss's original Brothers, packing a King of Tone and a two-voice treble booster into the standard Chase Bliss pedal format²⁵.

Two King of Tone channels and a treble booster

The Brothers AM is effectively two identical but separate pedals in one enclosure, each controlled by its own footswitch⁶. Each gain channel is based on the King of Tone circuit, itself a descendant of the Marshall Blues Breaker, and a 3-way toggle on each side selects boost, overdrive or distortion⁷¹⁸. Guitar Pedal X sums up the lineage as "2 x KOT BluesBreaker + Beano Boost"⁷.

The treble booster is a two-voice circuit with a 3-position switch: a brighter position, a less bright position, and the center. Chase Bliss describes it as "brash, bright, and charged"¹⁸. On the pedal itself, the booster is associated with side one only and sits before side one in the signal path, so it drives that channel rather than acting as a standalone output boost⁴.

The controls

The face of the pedal holds six knobs: two identical sets of gain, volume and tone, one per channel⁸. Side one's knobs are color coded yellow and side two's pink, so you can tell the two channels apart at a glance⁴. Two dedicated toggles sit on either side of the 3-position treble booster switch⁸.

The presence control is worth knowing about. It is not a separate knob: you hold down the footswitch on the side you want to change and turn that side's tone control⁴. On That Pedal Show, Dan found that opening the presence "really opened out" a previously more closed-in, mid-focused sound⁴.

Presets, MIDI, expression and CV

Like other Chase Bliss pedals, the Brothers AM wraps its analog circuit in a digital control layer. There are four internal presets, with a bank switch on the back giving access to a second bank, and 122 presets via MIDI¹⁴. A toggle switch on the pedal gives you two presets, with the middle position giving live settings straight from the knobs⁴. Over MIDI, everything is saved as a preset: knob positions and DIP switch positions included⁴.

External control options:

• MIDI (PC, CC): program change and control change messages, with 122 preset slots¹
• Expression pedal: assignable to any of the knobs, with minimum and maximum levels set via DIP switches¹⁴
• CV control: control voltage over every knob¹
• External switching: the MIDI jack accepts any normally open momentary footswitch on a mono TS tip-and-sleeve cable to turn side two on and off⁴

The DIP switches

The back panel carries 16 DIP switches, split into control and custom groups⁵⁹. The control switches assign an expression or CV source to Vol 1, Vol 2, Gain 1, Gain 2, Tone 1 or Tone 2, with sweep and polarity options⁹. The custom switches change how the pedal behaves⁹.

In practice the custom switches let you add extra gain, reconfigure the footswitches for momentary bypass, repurpose the volume and tone knobs as master volume and presence controls, save and switch between two additional presets, assign expression control and more⁸. Presence and tone can also be linked per channel via the Pres Link switches⁹. Joel Korte told Guitar World that running two boosts, two distortions, or adjusting presence on either channel is "pretty easy to do" with the external controls¹⁰.

How it compares and what reviewers said

Against the King of Tone itself, reviewers found the Brothers AM captures the original's character without being a clone. Guitar Pedal X's Stefan Karlsson found it "slightly more vibrant than the King of Tone, which is slightly softer and gooier"¹¹. On That Pedal Show, Mick went further, saying "I prefer the Brothers AM to the King of Tone"⁴. Guitar.com's Jason Mays wrote that it "nails the vibe of the original and captures even more of the little nuances than the impressive MXR Duke of Tone"⁶.

Guitar Pedal X called it "the simplest Chase Bliss pedal for a long while," one that "does a wholly beautiful job" of replicating the King of Tone and Beano Boost, while noting the price: "Yes it's pricey, but Chase Bliss always deliver so much more!"⁹. The same site named it Silver runner-up in its 2025 boost and overdrive pedals of the year¹¹. On the fuzz question, Karlsson found the Beano treble boost "can deliver a degree of fuzzy tones" that combine with the gain channels for a potent range of tones and textures⁹. Rhett Shull, demoing it with Josh Scott ahead of release, felt the format itself was an improvement: "This is more pedalboard friendly" than the original King of Tone¹².

That Pedal Show's full comparison against the King of Tone, Prince of Tone and MXR Duke of Tone covers the family resemblance and the differences in practice, including the preset system, the presence control and the treble boost voices⁴.

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Rhett Shull's pre-release demo with Josh Scott walks through the pedal's controls and how it stacks against the original⁴.

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