We’ve been following the genesis of Chase Bliss Audio‘s creative looper Blooper since NAMM 2019 and then in the Knobs videos below. On December 10th the Toronto videographer announced that the pedal is ready and will be shipping soon. The company raised almost 400,000 with a Kickstarter campaign for funding the pedal.
The Blooper is a looper with tons of creative and, dare we say, imaginative features born from a collaboration between the Minneapolis pedal company and pedal videographer Knobs. It has way too many features to list, so we invite you to watch the videos below to get familiar with what it does. but here’s a brief description directly from the manufacturer:
[It does] loop saving, eight layers of undo and redo, and external syncing. On the creative end, there are two channels of modifiers, a lo-fi Stability control, and three looping modes. blooper’s heart is Additive mode, which allows you to record sound modifiers directly into the loop like any other overdub.
Here’s the video about Firmware v2:
These videos were made using the first firmware software.
Here’s the section of the latest video from Knob that gets into the pedal’s details:
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KNOB’S FULL BLOOPER REEL
December 10, Episode #9: Blooper is finished, shipping towards the end of December!
November 1st, Episode #8: After eight months of trial and error and function refinement, the Blooper is getting close to being finalized.
October 1st, Episode #7: new features are announced, improvements are made, it has a CV clock! The Blooper is getting there.
September 1st, Episode #6 of the Chase Bliss Audio Blooper video series opens with the announcement of a Kickstarter campaign to crowd-fund the final development of the pedal! More in the video below.
August 1st, Episode #5 of the Blooper saga is out and the pedal is slowly coming into its own with some new features like external control for play/record and an intriguing ramping function. A few bugs didn’t prevent the pedal from being used for the first time in a session.
July 1st, 2019 – Episode #4
Knobs just published the 4th episode of your favorite series about “how a guitar pedal gets built” – the only series of its kind that was ever created.
It’s about the Chase Bliss Audio upcoming creative looper pedal Blooper, check it out below – you’ll find the other episodes under the video.
May 30th, 2019 – Episode #3
Here’s the 3rd Episode of the Knobs documentary about the process of creating the Chase Bliss Audio Blooper, it seems to be coming together, there are new buttons! See below for the previous episodes.
April 17th, 2019 – Episode #2
The 2nd Episode of the Knobs documentary about the process of creating the Chase Bliss Audio Blooper is here! For more info, see the March update under the video.
March 7, 2019 – Episode #1
At NAMM 2019 there was so much hype about the (wild) Chase Bliss Audio Automatone that hardly anybody noticed the prototype of the Blooper, that (apparently) was sitting in plain view inside the Chase Bliss booth throughout the Anaheim show.
Luckily, the Italian crew of AccordoTV caught it on camera and got owner/designer Joel to say a few things about it in the video streaming below.
This device is once again a collaboration pedal, a format the Minneapolis manufacturer seems to have grown fond of in recent months, since its latest three pedals were all the result of multi-handed/headed team work. In this case, the partners are 3 Degrees Audio (a very new company producing wicked looking digital effects) and Knobs, the talented Canadian videographer that produces all the Chase Bliss demos and is in charge of filming the process that leads to the creation of this effect.
The Blooper is hosted in a compact case in the classic Chase Bliss Audio format (6 knobs, two footswitches and tons of toggle and DIP switches). It’s a stereo looper that lets you do crazy things to the sampled audio.
Interestingly, the company commissioned their videographer of choice Knobs to shoot a documentary about the making of the pedal. As you can see from episode 1, streaming below, the process is fraught with challenges – and this pedal is nowhere near ready!
Hear from Joel himself what it does in the video below.
The bottomless looper.
Within this little blue rectangle is an intricate machine to explore, unravel, and make your own, with infinite opportunities and outcomes. The dream of blooper was to merge high-quality looping with creative manipulation, allowing you to steer your loops to new and extraordinary places. Record a loop one day, save, then come back and transform it on another.
On the practical end, there is loop saving, eight layers of undo and redo, and external syncing. On the creative end, there are two channels of modifiers, a lo-fi Stability control, and three looping modes. blooper’s heart is Additive mode, which allows you to record sound modifiers directly into the loop like any other overdub.
