Does the New Chase Bliss Brothers AM Come Close to the King of Tone?
Collaboration between CB and Analog Man!
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Does the New Chase Bliss Brothers AM Come Close to the King of Tone? · Source: Chase Bliss
When Joel Korte and his colleagues release a new effect, it’s become something of an event. This time, they’ve joined forces with Analog Man – you know, THE Analog Man, the Company known for King of Tone. or the Chase Bliss Brothers AM. What came out of it?
Chase Bliss on Overdrive
2017, the world was a different place. “Despacito” drove us crazy, as did fidget spinners. And Brothers, Chase Bliss’ first overdrive pedal came onto the market. The pedal market was also smaller back then, more boutique, more niche.
For fans of Chase Bliss, Brothers was a a bit of surprise at the time, as the manufacturer had previously been rather averse to distortion pedals. But the pedal’s commercial success probably must have spoken for itself. In the years after Brothers, pedals like the mighty Preamp MKII, the original Condor and its reissue Condor HiFi, and the US-exclusive Dirt Bird all warmed the hearts of overdrive fans. By comparison, however, the Chase Bliss Brothers AM is an entirely different story.
Chase Bliss Brothers AM: Now King of Tone Flavored
For the new edition, CB have teamed up with none other than Mike Piera, the mastermind behind Analog Man. King of Tone, anyone? For newcomers: King of Tone is considered to be pretty much the holy grail among overdrives. If you order one from Analog Man, you’re on a waiting list. That’s because the pedal is handcrafted from the rarest components. And it can easily take five to seven years before you get one.
This leads to rather hilarious second-hand prices on Reverb, often in the four-digit range. However, owners of a King of Tone don’t have to worry about getting competition from the Chase Bliss Brothers AM. The manufacturer describes the pedal as the counterpart to the KoT, of course, with some of Chase Bliss’s typical extras.
Triple Double
At its core, the Chase Bliss Brothers AM is similar to its predecessor, an overdrive pedal with two stages—for both, you get to adjust distortion type (boost, overdrive, or distortion), gain, and tone separately. The signal from channel 1 flows into channel 2, so you can stack overdrives or use a boost to chase the signal into the distortion.
In addition to separate three-way switches for the distortion mode of both channels, there is also a switch for a treble boost in the middle. The Brothers AM also has a hidden mode that allows you to adjust presence in each channel (using the tone controls). In addition, you can save the settings as presets, which you can then access via MIDI (or the small switch between the footswitches).
Furthermore, there is a whole series of small dip switches on top of the pedal, which is a CB staple nowadays. Here, you can set which parameters you want to control via MIDI, and some additional modes can also be activated here. New compared to its predecessor are the Pres Link and Master modes. When you activate the former, the Tone controls control Presence simultaneously. And with Master, the second overdrive’s volume control goes from channel to output volume – this should help you avoid volume jumps when stacking.
How much does the Chase Bliss Brothers AM cost?
The Chase Bliss Brothers AM is now available in the manufacturer’s shop for €469.
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