Chase Bliss Audio Revives and Refines Classic Audio's Smart Expression Roller Expression Controller

Back in 2019 I reported the unfortunate retirement of two great pedal brands - Blackout Effectors and Classic Audio Effects. Classic Audio was first as the original creator and innovator of the smart expression roller - which obviously has that wheel control element in place of the usual treadle-based expression pedal. Classic Audio also made Volume pedals (passive and active) with the same mechanic, and included that roller element on a number of its other pedals - including delay, drive, octave, pitch-bender and reverb.

For me this is a very elegant design of expression controller delivered in an incredibly neat form factor. It’s interesting to see just how similar the Chase Bliss Audio version is to the original in its make-up.

CBA’s refinements are fourfold here - obviously the internal circuit / electronics are different and this new version is fully passive - while more visibly this has two outputs versus the Classic’s single one - so you can control two pedals from this one unit. Finally, and pretty importantly - the CBA roller is numbered - so you can instantly see what level/value it’s set too / parked at - which the original somehow overlooked.

These sorts of things always make me feel a little nostalgic and sad - as Classic Audio was a really innovative brand - possibly just a little ahead of its time. I see the CBA Expression Roller as a homage to that innovative original.

There are so many smart Expression controllers on the market now - including my friend Oriol’s Expression Knob and Dan from Cooper FX’s new Expression Generator - which is very much a smarter version of a concept I proposed back in 2019 as a Momentary Expression Micro Controller!

The CBA Expression Roller has two internal dip-switches - one per output - which allows you to invert/reverse the direction of the expression for each output. By default 0 represents heel-down, and 10 is toe-down - while flipping the dip-switch makes 10 heel-down and 0 toe-down!

CBA’s Expression Roller is usually available for $179 from the CBA Webstore - while the first batch is sold out already - there will of course be more! And I dare say some of those will make it through to dealers too eventually.

I will most certainly be getting one of these some day - as I missed out on the Classic Audio version - this version as is usually CBA’s way - is just a little bit more clever and refined!

Will you be adding one to your own setup?