Chase Bliss Audio Curiously Sets Up Kickstarter for forthcoming Blooper Looper Pedal - and Reaches Goal within 5 Hours and 17 Minutes!

I can only assume that in the wake of so many MOOD Micro Loopers sold, Joel Korte and his gang weren’t sure how much demand there would be for their pricier original Blooper Looper concept. Kickstarter is always a great place to gauge the market as much as fund your project. In any case he need not have worried as the $100,000 target was reached just a little over 5 hours later. The fact that these are priced at $499 and up meant that only a couple of hundred backers or so were needed to reach the goal.

I personally had long been running the internal debate/conundrum as to which of the two loopers I would go for. I decided on balance that I would probably get more out of he Blooper for my own needs, and thus joined in this Kickstarter campaign. Actually the bigger reveal to me is that I really like both of these, and they are sufficiently different to justify ownership of both - so I will be adding the MOOD too at some stage. I’ve seen a few demos where the two are used in combination even for some totally next level signal manipulation - I guess you may as well try all the different permutations. In any case I really want the Automatone too which I feel will likely creep into Winter NAMM 2020 territory now, and I fear the price will be over the $1,000 mark - but we shall see!

As for the Blooper, the latest details are as follows:

• 40 seconds max loop time (48kHz, 16 bit) with ultra-low-noise hardware / XMOS DSP processor, 32 save-able presets and full undo / redo capability
• 8 layers of undo / redo, unlimited overdubs (oldest layer gets discarded after 8)
• Layers knob to navigate through undo / redo layers
• 6 loop modifiers (quantized & free time/speed changes, scrambler, trimmer, filter and dropper) available over 2 independent channels
• Normal, additive (effects get recorded), and one-shot sampling modes
• Full midi implementation via 1/4" TRS
• Repeats knob for fading loops or to use blooper like a tap-tempo delay
• CV clock sync and modulation control
• Stability control introducing optional tape and warble effects to loop.
• Chase Bliss ramping control (including randomization and ability to sync to loop time)
• Expression control over any parameter either individually or simultaneously
• Dip-switches for customizing behavior: dry kill, straight to overdub, etc.

There was also this handy summary from CBA’s article on the MOOD vs Blooper:

"Blooper…is serious shit. Not really. But it is kind of. The foundation of Blooper is a high-quality looper with practical, handy features: saving, syncing, multiple levels of undo / redo, MIDI control, etc. It will do everything you expect from a performance looper, plus a little more. And then – THEN – we get to the point of it: being able to take this high-quality loop and go absolutely anywhere you want. Give it an analog feel, scramble it into a pattern, crossfade two different loops together. It is a collection of parts that you can adapt to your looping needs. And the core of Blooper, the tape machine itself, is aware of these changes and able to record them. With Blooper you get over 30 seconds (UPDATE - now 40!) of high-quality loop time with 7 undo / redo layers. That is not a trivial thing.

It is a looping vehicle. If you want to wildly apply modifiers and record them and just see what happens, good. You will get very strange sounds. And if you want to have a loop that evolves over time, disintegrating and getting older, good. If you’re simply interested in a looper with some more flexible editing tools, like filtering and trimming, good. GOOD. It’s about having a rewarding, creative looping experience that suits your needs.

Okay maybe we’ll stop there for now. Blooper will have its day. Today is MOOD’s day. A time for MOOD.

Blooper is about flexible, open-ended looping, MOOD is about play and discovery."

The total Blooper picture still isn’t 100% clear, but you get a reasonable idea if you watch the Blooper Reel videos from number 3 onwards - when they first introduced the Modifier push-buttons. This has obviously been a huge collaborative exercise and so much work and so many iterations have gone into bringing this to fruition. It’s genuinely a revolutionary and unique looper - I would of course have preferred stereo output, but I can accommodate it earlier in my signal chain nonetheless.

None of the Knobs Blooper Reel videos seem to be embeddable - they can all be found on the Knobs YouTube Channel however.

What are your thoughts on the Blooper and MOOD - are you in or out here?