Chase Bliss Clean: the creative compressor (pedal)

  • Stereo
  • Analogue
  • VCA based 2-stage compression
  • Feedforward/feedback blending
  • Dynamic EQ
  • Envelope follower
  • External sidechain
  • Noise gate
  • Dry/wet mix
  • Dynamic response manipulation
  • Limiter
  • Presets
  • MIDI
  • CV/Expression
  • Customisation via dip switches

Shipping since the 1st of November 2024.

User guide:

MIDI manual:

Video manual

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Interesting to see both Polyend and Chase Bliss releasing a stereo compressor pedal less than a month in between.

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Very nice video manual, as usual. Dusty mode seems to be very well suited to process drum busses. But I haven’t found a lot of examples where the dusty mode is shown off with guitar yet. I can’t wait to try that (and all the other stuff) myself!

Mine shipped yesterday, hopefully it will be at my doorstep by the end of this week.
Gonna be real fun to dig in!

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Stupid question

Can you only buy from their own website? I don’t seem to find a dealers list or something.

Yup, they moved to a direct to customer model recently

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They ship from the US, EU and the UK and have fair conditions (free shipping, 50% of import taxes offered) for countries outside of these territories.

All I want in 2025 is a compressor that also passes the sidechain source (eg kick drum) through to the outputs :weary:

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This or the Endorphin.es Golden Master?

Oooh – looking forward to see / hear what you do with it and what you think.

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Maybe something to test out as a end of chain processing pedal for the octatrack.

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Clean just arrived today and I only had time for a quick play with my guitar. This compressor is the nicest sounding overdrive pedal I’ve ever had, lol :sweat_smile:

Edit: And the rest of the pedal is great as well. It does live up to my expectations of being a good fit as the first pedal in my guitar FX chain (Clean -> GenLossII -> HX One -> Lossy -> Iridium). The noise gate removes the hum from my single coil pickups, although I have to completely turn down the threshold or it will also swallow up lightly finger picked notes.
It does a fine job as a compressor and is pretty easy and intuitive to use. I don’t know if I will find a use case for the sag setting. Holding the right footswitch actually maxes out the ratio knob all the way to sag. I think it would be more useful to me if this would engage the dusty mode. I saved dusty mode to one of the presets to have easy access to it and it’s wonderful. I don’t know why nobody seemed to highlight that aspect in their youtube videos or CB promo material with guitar in mind. I would keep the pedal on my board if dusty mode would have been the only available mode, actually. Lots of fun to play around with.
The EQ modulation mode is nice and vibey. Same goes for the pseudo-tremolo (motion dip switch), which I saved to the other preset slot for easy access. Clean’s approach to the obligatory chase bliss wobbly volume modulations is also pretty nice this time around, especially on the subtle setting on the physics switch. I actually disabled the volume dropouts on my GenLossII and rarely engage the packets switch on my Lossy, as they are both pretty heavy handed and cut out the signal all the way to zero volume. With the dry knob on Clean, it’s possible to dial this in with more nuance.
I had the Chorma Console before, which I mostly used for some compression, modulation, and drive (the sweeten mode is indeed pretty sweet on it). Clean might not offer the same value for money, as it lacks the looper, delays, phaser, vibrato and so on. But regarding the things it can do and what I bought it for (noise gate, compression, removing some lows, modulation, drive), it’s absolutely spot on.

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Yes mine got here this past weekend
I couldn’t tear myself away to post anything about it

But this is pretty spot on to my experience
Even the bit about it taking the place of my chroma console (it’s probably going to live on my hydra synth now)

My only add on this this is that with the wet and dry knobs this pedal can get things really loud but with no noise
It’s a beautiful way to get really loud clean tones that can smack the other pedals in new ways

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First fiddle:

This thing is awesome!

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listening to some lo-fi hip-hop where there is some heavy compression with maybe some sidechaining going on and getting… thoughts about Clean. Maybe I should look up some demos. Or, maybe I shouldn’t :sweat_smile:

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Would love to hear experiences about use with electric piano sounds, as people get the chance :pray:

I assume you’ve had a few more fiddles now. Curious to know how you’re using it and if it’s a keeper?

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Yeah it’s a keeper for sure! However I really love compressors and this one has a lot of use cases. End of chain, flexible panner, saturation, EQ etc.

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Ooh, that’s what I was afraid to hear… I just spent my money on something else so I probably won’t be purchasing a clean anytime soon. I might consider selling my Boum for one though… curious if you or anyone else here has used both and could tell me how they compare. I really like the Boum as an end of chain compressor but I don’t really use any if it’s other features.

I have not used boom, but I’m guessing that there is probably some things boom does that Clean does not and vice versa.