Chase Bliss Audio Tonal Recall

For the uninitiated, Chase Bliss Audio is what our friends at The Deli Mag would call a manufacturer “with buzz.” Started by Joel Korte in 2013, the company’s first products were born from an intense period of inspiration, which allowed the pedal designer to quickly develop a name for himself, in particular thanks to truly insane levels of attention to detail and functionality,  as extensively demonstrated by the the fact that each Chase Audio Pedal has 16 dip switches in the back, opening up almost infinite tweaking options.

On the site’s FAQ, Forte explains this way his design choice:

I don’t want to limit your imagination. You don’t have to touch the dip switches in the back if you don’t want to, but I want you to be able to modulate any of the parameters on the front either individually or simultaneously. And to select which ones you are interested in, I need dip switches.

The latest buzz came as word trickled out that Joel would be releasing a new pedal called the Tonal Recall for Winter NAMM 2016, complete with cover art that riffs on the Total Recall font. Nobody knew exactly what the Tonal Recall would be, but it turns out it’s the Minneapolis based manufacturer’s much anticipated debut delay pedal. Announced just a few weeks back.

The pedal has a 100% analog signal path in the vein of the Chase Bliss “digital brain, analog heart” motto. Among its features:

• built in tap tempo,
• MIDI adaptability for additional control
• foot controlled presets (2 foot controlled and over 100 with MIDI),
• a host of controls for modulation like shape, rate, and depth,
• a wave shape control (square, sine),
• wet/dry controls,
• a hold foot control to add continual oscillation and 16 “dip” switches on the back of the pedal, which can serve as adjusters for the individual parameters on the pedal.

The geeks among you may want to zoom in our picture of the dip switches to figure out some other features!

Compared to other analog delay pedals, the Tonal Recall is cased in a normal size box so it won’t take up nearly as much space on a pedal board as its high end peers. Which, for a stompbox this deep, is kind of miraculous! – Ryan Dembinski