The Lossy Pedal!

It was an uncharacteristically gray April day here in Southern California when the team from Chase Bliss parked under the orange tree in front of my house. The weather felt quite cold to me, but as they piled out of their rented van, I could tell they weren’t all that bundled up and didn’t mind the overcast sky and light chill.

We crowded around an orange table in a three-sided courtyard and began a little small talk. I asked if they enjoyed their retreat in Joshua Tree (they had), and Devin asked if the weather was nice out there (it was). But Chase Bliss asked a bigger question: what kind of pedal could we make together?

We’d been talking about a collaboration for over a year at that point, but no single idea had yet stuck to the wall. Then, in the courtyard at the orange table, someone said:

“What if we kept it simple — what if Lossy was a pedal?”

I can’t quite remember who said it. Certainly someone from Chase Bliss; most likely the man they call Knobs.

Or did Devin say it? I should’ve worn another layer that day. The cold has fogged my memory.

Whoever it was, that simplicity struck the group and took hold of the conversation: a guitar pedal that emulated the sound of low-quality mp3 files? Could the company with the digital brain and the analog heart commit themselves to something so… natively digital?

I asked them as much, to which they paused. All eyes turned to Knobs, but then his eyes turned to Joel, their leader.

“Oh absolutely!,” said Joel.

And just like that: we were making a pedal together!

Which is exactly what we’ve done.

Just eight months after that fateful meeting at an orange table under gray skies, Chase Bliss and Goodhertz have made a pink pedal: Lossy.

If you’ve read this far, we know you’ll love the pedal, so go get one before they’re gone!

We want to send a gigantic thank-you to everyone at Chase Bliss for making this happen, and for being so enthusiastic about putting our DSP into such an amazing — and beautiful — little piece of hardware.

Personally, I’d also like to thank Devin and Jasper, who’ve been working on getting our DSP into hardware since all the way back in 2018. It’s been a long road (which Covid turned into an odyssey), but it’s all been worth it.

What an absolute joy it is to plug a guitar into a pedal and hear the underwater garbles of Lossy come to life on a quarter-inch out.