Chase Bliss reissues the Condor in new HiFi edition - which delivers lower noise floor, smoother breakup, and more headroom

I’m not sure any of us were really expecting the return of the Condor. A lot of us are rather waiting for a stereo Dark World, the assumption was that the Condor was largely obsoleted by the Automatone Preamp MKII.

Yet here we have a new and improved version of that well loved format - and whether this is exciting news depends largely on how you mostly use this pedal.

If you mainly use the EQ and Filter elements - then the newer lower noise, smoother breakup and higher headroom HiFi edition is actually a really decent upgrade. While for me I mostly use it as and interestingly flavoured Boost and Overdrive. As you can see from Joel’s oscilloscope tracings the original Condor had a very distinct sort of jagged wave shape breakup profile.

This delivers a really unique flavour of breakup - quite bright and splashy, but slightly raw and ragged at the same time - with excellent articulation. Of course if you max everything out like in Joel’s extreme demo below - it can sound really quite nasty. While if you dial that down a little - then you genuinely have a really great and distinct sounding boost / overdrive - which is how I mostly use it. I have my Empress ParaEQ 2 DLX to do all the smart EQ. While for those that primarily use this as an EQ and Filter pedal - then the upgrades really make sense.

Note that you can get your original pedal upgraded to the new specs for just $49 / €49 - while as I said, depending on your primary usage - you will get different mileage out of those updates.

Only 2,000 ’boards’ (PCBs) of this type have been made. 1,000 are available straight away for order as the new HiFi Condor pedal. And 1,000 boards are reserved for the upgrades - if any of those are left after the 3 month upgrade period - then those will be made into the HiFi pedal editions too.

Both orders and upgrades can be accessed from the same page on the Chase Bliss Website - the new pedal is $399 and equivalent, and the upgrades are $49 / €49 as mentioned!

Whichever version of Condor you choose - it’s a fantastically versatile pedal - which covers - Analog EQ, Preamp, Boost / Overdrive, Filter, Auto-Wah, Phaser-ish, Tremolo, Harmonic Tremolo etc. It can do all manner of different things - where I already have preferred individual pedals for Filtering, Phaser, Tremolo and EQ. It’s a veritable chameleon of a pedal and means very different things to different players. For some this is an essential multi-displinary workhorse, while for me it’s a more occasional rotation pedal - which has a very unique gain breakup profile.

Some will leap on this straight away as it’s a new Chase Bliss pedal - some because they had some noise issues with the original edition, while those like me who primarily use this as a gain pedal - then we actually like the jagged wave shape of the original’s breakup, and would not have it any other way!

What say all of you?

Front Facia Controls - Gain (Ramp), Freq, Volume, Bass, Mids, LPF, Bass : Minimal / Moderate / Most, Mids Q : Wide / Moderate / Narrow, LPF : One-Pole / Two-Pole Moderate / Two-Pole Resonant, Presets : 1 / Manual / 2, Bypass Footswitch, Drive/Hold Footswitch.

16 Dip-switches : Expression / Ramp Parameters [Hold HHT | DRB] - Freq, Volume, Bass, Mids, LPF, Bounce, Buffer, MotoByp | Freq, Volume, Bass, Mids, LPF, Drive, Reset, Sweep.