The Chase Bliss Habit Echo Collector is a multi-mode digital delay pedal made in the USA, and one of the most unconventional entries in the delay category. On the surface it works like a familiar delay, but underneath it is always recording everything you play into a three-minute memory, and its controls let you pull sounds out of that memory and fold them back into your repeats1.
The Habit Echo Collector is a multi-mode digital delay pedal made in the USA by Chase Bliss, designed with Scott Harper, Chase Bliss's full-time director of product development, who also collaborated on the Blooper1. It carries a UK list price of £3991.
The Habit Echo Collector was retired by Chase Bliss in April 2026. It remains available second-hand, and this page covers what the pedal does for anyone comparing it against other Chase Bliss delays.
A delay with a three-minute memory
Strip away the extras and, as Guitar.com's reviewer Richard Purvis put it, "you'll have a basic digital delay with three knobs"1. The three dials along the top, Level, repeats and size, act as they do on any delay pedal, offering everything from subtle background echoes to eternal repeats, though not uncontrollable self-oscillation. At normal settings the noise floor is low and the repeats are clean1.
The interesting part starts with the other dials. The spread dial has two jobs depending on where you set it. On the first part of its travel it introduces a second delay, which you can tweak to sit in or out of time with the main repeats. Push it past 11 o'clock and the Habit starts flipping through its sample banks instead1. The spread and scan dials together let you bring back snippets of sound from anywhere in the pedal's always-recording three-minute memory1.
A routing toggle switch alters the internal routing so that the repeats are modified just once, or cumulatively, or are fed back into the memory for what Purvis called "extra-zany looping"1. Between the bypass and tap-tempo footswitches sits a preset switch: centered, you are in standard manual mode, and flipping it left or right recalls one of two presets1.
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Level/ramp | Output level of the repeats |
| Repeats (feedback) | Number of repeats, up to eternal repeats |
| Size (delay time) | Delay time |
| Modify | Adjusts one of six sound-mutating modes |
| Spread | Second delay in or out of time; past 11 o'clock, flips through sample banks |
| Scan | Retrieves snippets from the three-minute memory |
The Habit shares some DNA with Chase Bliss's Blooper and Mood pedals, and Scott Harper, the man behind the Knobs channel on YouTube, who collaborated on the Blooper and is now Chase Bliss's full-time director of product development, worked on it1.
The six modify modes
The Modify knob lets you adjust any one of six sound-mutating modes, selected via two toggle switches below it, one choosing the A/off/B bank and the other the mode number 1, 2 or 31.
| Mode | Name | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| A1 | Stepped speed | Repeats flutter off skywards in fifths and octaves, higher and faster as you push the control round; reversed left of 12 o'clock |
| A2 | Stability | Left of noon adds woozy modulation in classic Memory Man style; right does the same with added background hiss |
| A3 | Trimmer | Repeats are snipped off to make them strangely stuttery |
| B1 | Pitch-shifting | Good for recreating the sound of a demonically possessed fairground with an expression pedal |
| B2 | Tone-filtering | Extreme filtering: low-pass to the left, high-pass to the right |
| B3 | Tremolo | Tremolo on the repeats |
Further control comes via a row of 16 dip-switches along the back: half of them choose which parameters will be affected by an expression pedal, and the other half offer yet more sonic customization1. The pedal also carries expression/CV and tap/MIDI inputs1.
What reviewers said
Guitar.com's Richard Purvis reviewed the Habit in April 2022 and gave it a rating of 9, calling it "a dauntingly complex little box of chaos that can also turn itself to familiar delay sounds"1. He placed it within the Chase Bliss range as the maker's most ambitious sound manipulator yet, noting that Chase Bliss specializes in compact pedals with lots of knobs and switches1.
His verdict came with caveats about price and usability:
"We had a riotously good time with the Habit. But should everybody buy one? Lawks a lordy, no."
Beyond the heavy-duty price and the fact that it can be maddening at times, he saw it as a particular kind of pedal rather than a general-purpose delay, and concluded that as long as you use it as a part-time aid to creativity rather than a replacement for it, "the Habit could prove a radical way of helping you to chase your own bliss"1.
Players comparing current Chase Bliss delays can look at the Chase Bliss Habit, the Chase Bliss Big Time and the Chase Bliss Reverse Mode C, which followed the Habit's retirement.
Videos
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David Hilowitz Music
ANDREW HUANG
Questions
Is the Chase Bliss Habit discontinued?
Yes. Chase Bliss retired the Habit Echo Collector in April 2026 after four years of service. It was originally launched in March 2022, and the original version was still available at a discount when the retirement was announced, while a limited 500-unit Shareware Edition had already sold out.
Does the Chase Bliss Habit have MIDI?
Yes. The Habit has tap/MIDI inputs alongside expression and CV inputs, plus 16 external dip-switches on the back. Half of those dip-switches choose which parameters an expression pedal will affect, and the other half offer further sonic customization.
Can the Habit self-oscillate?
Not in the runaway sense. The top-row dials offer everything from subtle background echoes to eternal repeats, but the pedal does not produce uncontrollable self-oscillation like some analog delays do. Its wilder territory comes instead from the modify modes and the three-minute memory.
Does the Habit Echo Collector take a battery?
No. It runs on a 9-volt mains supply only, drawing 150mA. There is no battery option, so it needs a power supply or an isolated output on a pedalboard power brick.
Is the Chase Bliss Habit true bypass?
No. The Habit uses buffered bypass rather than true bypass. It draws 150mA from a 9-volt supply and is made in the USA.
Sources (1)
- The Big Review: Chase Bliss Habit Echo Collector, Guitar.com, 2022-04-14
