Be kind, rewind.

Why we rebooted the Generation Loss.

posted by Joel Korte

Generation Loss is back, almost. 

You probably knew this was coming.

But the way this project played out has been pretty surprising for me and an interesting start of the Cooper chapter here at Chase Bliss. This pedal is really different, in a way that would have scared me if not for one thing. 

That I will explain. But first:

Why are we doing a preorder?

Because it’s been near-impossible to get a Generation Loss over its lifespan.

The nice thing about a preorder is that we don’t have to guess about how many to make. Because we’re usually wrong and then things sell out.

You tell us how many you want, then we’ll go ahead and do that.

I do want to say this — even with a preorder there are no guarantees. I really have no idea how many of you want one of these, and ultimately there is a limit to how many parts we can get (and I don’t know what it is because it’s always changing).

But I don’t think we will hit that limit. Now that we’ve gone direct I think we can get a Generation Loss to everybody that wants one.

A bit about the pedal

So Tom joins the team and we don’t even need to talk about it, the first thing to do is make a Generation Loss. Tom got down to work and I left him alone and then months later we started talking about what he’s actually doing and I realized it’s a totally different pedal. 

And it was kind of scary.

The Generation Loss was already so beloved just the way it was.

The idea behind Generation Loss was always to make a VHS simulator, but up to this point it’s really kind of been its own thing. A big part of the Generation Loss was sample rate reduction, for example, but VHS players don’t do that. At least not to audio. It’s almost been like a mix of the audio and visual aspects of VHS in one. 

Which is actually pretty great.

So why are we changing it?

Well, we are and we aren’t. That’s the comforting thing. Generation Loss MKII has a Classic mode that keeps things exactly as they were. Safe. 

So that’s fine.

But Tom really wanted to get the VHS thing right this time and that’s what the new version is all about. I guess you could say it’s the difference between imagining what VHS sounds like (Classic), and actually analyzing and reproducing it (MKII). 

It’s extremely cool. He’s had an old VHS player opened up on his desk for months, he’s been messing with it and really zeroing in on what’s happening when we hear those nostalgic sounds we like. What’s specifically going wrong inside the machinery to make it sound so good?

Anyway, that’s probably a story we’ll tell over the next few months as we get ready to start shipping these things out. I do want to say that Tom and I are so happy with how this has all turned out, both the pedal and the plan. This is the Tom we’ve all always dreamed of… he’s been able to hole up in his workspace for nearly a year and do the thing he loves with very minimal distraction or outside interference. I like to think of it as Tom Unleashed.

Details

The pedal is very, very close to finished at this point. Very. I filmed a walkthrough with Tom and Zack that explores it in its current state, we’ll have that out later this week.

In the meantime, here’s a quick guide to what it does.

We’ll be rolling out more thorough resources over the next bit as we approach the finish line. 

Our target for shipping is to get started in late-September, and have all orders out the door by early November. They will be shipped in the order we receive them. 

Hope this is exciting news, and as always feel free to shoot us a message if you have any questions. 

Thank you!