“An audio-controlled sampler that tracks your playing to create immersive musical landscapes”: Chase Bliss’ Onward sampler pedal is glitching and freezing heaven for guitarists of all styles

Chase Bliss has unveiled the Onward sampler – an impressively dynamic new effects pedal that, in the firm's words, is “an audio-controlled sampler that tracks your playing and uses it to create really immersive musical landscapes that move when you do”. 

Its story traces back two years, when Tom Majeski, formerly of CooperFX, joined Chase Bliss. Together, they created the Generation Loss MKII, which makes your electric guitar sound like a VCR.  

Onward continues to harness Majeski’s CooperFX heritage – and pays homage to the celebrated Chase Bliss Outward granular freeze pedal in the process – but with a twist.  

“Onward is very much its own thing,” says Chase Bliss. “It doesn’t try to do everything that Outward did. It’s a more focused, refined pedal that takes its envelope mode concepts and dives all the way to the bottom.”  

Chase Bliss calls Onward a sampler that sensitively reacts to a player's performance, “moving as you do with each of its two channels capturing audio samples and then running it through the pedal's synthy sorcery.”

Its extensive control range includes six knobs, three switches, and two footswitches. Mix sets the balance between the input signal and the pedal, controlling its Freeze and Glitch functions, with Size setting the length and timing of the Glitch.  

There's a Sustain control, with a fade switch offering Slow, Custom and Fast fade-in and -out styles. 

The Error knobs sets the likelihood of an intentional error to the glitch effect, as well as its intensity, with its partner switch offering different sample sizes, rate shifts, and playback speed and directions. 

Additionally, an Octave dial blends in an additional voice that is either half-speed with a lower octave, double-speed with an upper, or off when set to noon. 

The Texture control is the last to have a partner switch, offering digital and analog-style grit, with vibrato, chorus, or bypassed animations achievable via the switch.

Finally, its footswitches engage the Glitch effect – hold to lock and preserve the current sample – and Freeze, which operates in the same way.

Chase Bliss adds the two sides of a player's samplings can form an unlikely friendship. 

“The freeze is smooth and shapeless, the glitch is crisp and repetitive,” the pedal maker says. “One gives you atmosphere and synthetic soundscapes, the other gives you rhythm and structure. You can use them solo, both at once, or lock in one side and play along to it, while the other continues to follow you.”

Pre-orders are now open, with the pedal priced at $399/€469.

The pedal is in its final weeks of beta testing, with shipping slated for mid-June. 

Head over to Chase Bliss in the mean time for a detailed breakdown of what this pedal can do.

For more wacky Chase Bliss pedals, check out the Condor HiFi, the next generation of its “weird little EQ pedal”.