Chase Bliss collaborates with Goodhertz to deliver a Pedal version of their well loved 'Lossy' Data Compression Signal Degradation Plugin

Joel obviously dropped a number of clues as to what Chase Bliss’s new pedal would be - and most guessed it was some kind of Lo-Fi / Fidelity Reducing - Filter / Compressor / Bitcrusher type of thing. While typically ’Bitcrushing’ is associated with the extreme 8bit style of effect which typically creates harder, harsher and more brittle artefacts - while the Lossy is a much more expansive, refined and nuanced affair.

Goodhertz describe their own source Lossy Plugin as the "infinitely desirable sound of crappy mp3’s, broken cellphones, streaming videos, and much more". Where Chase Bliss then describe the pedal take as being akin to "Streaming music on a 56k modem, an MP3 ripped from a CD-R, a viral video from 2007 played through a cellphone."

I see it very much as a companion / partner pedal to the Gen Loss - while working on quite a different style of signal degradation. There are certainly parallels in their overall intentions - but they actually render as not just quite different effects - but wholly different devices really.

There’s lots to get stuck into here - and I really don’t want to re-write the manual / field guide - which is another superb production by presumable Scott Harper and Eric Nyffeler. Chase Bliss are definitely the benchmark for pedal manuals!

Per my above visual - which formed and evolved throughout the release day - gaining a little more details and notes as I understood more of the manual - both literary and video. In my usual way I’m going to try to break it down into the key elements - without hopefully going into too much detail.

So what we have here is a Digital Signal Processing Data Compression Degradation Effect with several components. Meant to emulate the ’lossy’ (vs lossless) quality of compressed digital recordings - in many ways as if someone played a recording through and old lower resolution telephone or AM radio even. It’s very much a highly advanced multi-band de-rezer. There are two key components to the signal degradation - Loss Mode and Packets (Dropouts).

We obviously have quite a lot of Secondary Functions here too which you access by simultaneously pressing both footswitches - where the Footswitch LEDs turn Green when active!

Here follow the basic details followed by the 2 pages of the Quick Start guide and the most relevant referenced from launch day. I of course ordered mine very early on and it was being shipped just after noon my time. You can get yours from the Chase Bliss Webstore of course - usual $399 price tag - and near $500 for us Europeans with delivery and import charges included!