I feel like a fan for wanting to write about it but Chase Bliss' new pedal has missed the mark for me.
Before they announced Lost & Found I had pondered whether a multi-effect would be an option for their new pedal.
Usually Chase Bliss will dive really deep on features, almost exhausting possibilities and then adding a digital brain that allows for recalling multiple presets and other MIDI options.
That, as much as being their first multi-effect, is a significant difference with this pedal and I can't help but think that it might be what's lost.
This focus on possibilities with switches and dipswitches has been an aspect of the company tagline "Digital Brain, Analog Heart" but interestingly it's an area that's been scrutinised by other fanboys.
The digital side of that analogy has come to dominate the CBA product line and the move away from light-dependent resistors must have pushed them further into algorithms.
So the announcement of the Brothers AM pedal earlier this year struck me as being a statement affirming their brand values, as much as another of those clever collaborations that have made Chase Bliss such an inspiring company for musicians.
I was really impressed with the original Brothers pedal and am looking forward to trying the new version, but it's still a long way away (like probably a five-hour drive).
This new pedal, Lost & Found, seems very much a digitally-brained and also "hearted" effect in combining a dozen or so interesting sounds and maximising the potential to cross-pollinate them together.
The video detailing the feature set includes Tom Majeski, who contributed to so much Bliss with the Onward pedal and Cooper collaboration Generation Loss that has been a part of that shift in the product line.
When I was daydreaming about what a new Chase Bliss pedal might include, I thought the idea of having a synth-style pedal could be good with the filters that provide character.
The pitch-tracking of pedals in recent years that allow polyphonic results has been a development that means I'm less likely to grab one of the MIDI guitars for jamming, but I guess I've been using Ableton Live's transcriptions for recordings for years anyway.
The idea of an instrument-like effect was one of those things that surprised me when it then appeared in the Lost & Found announcement, which brings together a "museum" of Bliss.
As a curator I really like the wunderkammer idea of the cabinet of curiosities from this company. but I guess the converse side of that was feeling underwhelmed.
These options seem to be kinda shallow compared to the deep dive other pedals take into failing media (like Lossy or Generation Loss).
From a value-proposition perspective I can see the brand needs to balance providing an inspiring palette for musicians within a pedal, while trying to include enough of the character that has distinguished Chase Bliss but not so much that people decide another pedal provides a depth to really make these sounds one's own.
I'm still weighing up whether I'm such a Bliss fan that I "need" this pedal, but my initial response is that my existing pedals provide most of these sounds.
With a few Zoia pedals I could probably get rid of most of my pedal collection, but I think their interfaces and design serve so many roles for a musicians.
I've written elsewhere about how much I like the nostalgic branding used by Chase Bliss, particularly the way old media shapes their sounds and appears in their marketing -- like the Viewmasters in the current promotions.
It's this character that underscores the "lost" in the model's name.
It is this blend of sentimentality and a nostalgia for things lost as the world moves forward that seems to embody a Japanese concept like wabi-sabi.
In fact, grief is such a theme in the Chase Bliss brand that I think it provides a sense of emotional depth and resonances that reach beyond being a pedal company.
If they were to start emulating Teenage Engineering, then I would be fascinated to be a fly on the wall in the meetings that Joel Korte would chair to canvas possibilities.
I would love to smell a range of candles or taste a sample box of chocolates for the experiences that I expect Chase Bliss would provoke, but at present I feel like Lost & Found is still looking for a place in my guitar effect pedal collection.
