figured I would work part-time as a speech
pathologist, do some contract work for Z.
Vex on the side, while working on some of
my own pedal designs. It seemed like it
could be perfect.
to an analog pitch vibrato—one of my
favorite effects. I still remember the first time
I heard it. Triangle wave on the front and sine
wave on the back, slow and weird. It was a
great moment.
I was able to successfully graduate in May of
2013 and started working part-time as a
speech pathologist, treating people who
stutter specifically. It was supposed to be my
dream gig, but after a few months I realized I
didn’t like it as much as I thought I would. At
the same time I was working on the Warped
Vinyl pedal, and I became pretty obsessed
with it. If I wasn’t working on it, I was thinking
about it. It was a wonderful and terrible time
of my life because I had a tough time being
“present” with loved ones. I had never been
one to really enjoy waking up early for
things, but I had absolutely no problem
waking up at crazy early times to get extra
hours to work on it.
Wombtone was my second pedal because a
friend who is a phaser nut introduced me to
the long discontinued Mu-Tron phasers. I fell
in love immediately, and after I did some
research, I found that there was hardly
anyone designing phasers with the type of
approach in the Mu-Tron. I tweaked the
circuit some to make it more my own, added
a tasty boost to make up for the volume
drop on the original, added the nutty digital
control, and the Wombtone was born. My
friend described the Mu-Tron’s tone as
“womb-like” which I thought was pretty
interesting, hence the name. I’m really
psyched about the mix control specifically on
MkII because it goes from 100 percent dry
to 100 percent wet pure phase vibrato,
which is a pretty rare control in phasers.
The original Mu-Tron also doesn’t deviate
from six stages, but there are some really
wonderful sounds at two and four stages
as well.
I released Warped Vinyl MkI late in
December of 2013, and slowly but surely it
became popular. It was only a few months
ago (February 2015) that I was able to make
Chase Bliss Audio a full-time gig.
TR: Let’s look closely at your first two
effects. The Warped Vinyl Analog Vibrato/
Chorus, and the Wombtone Analog
Phaser. Why these two effects first?
JK: Warped Vinyl was there from the start, it
was the catalyst of this whole thing. I wanted
to develop a really flexible, unprecedented
way to control an LFO. My ModuShape
engine was born. I was dying to hear what
ModuShape would sound like when applied
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BUILDER PROFILE //
TR: Your effects are not inexpensive, yet
they seem to have caught on quickly with
the boutique crowd. What has made your
pedals stand out against a fairly crowded
market these days?
JK: I think pedal users are getting
increasingly sophisticated and they are tired
of the same old thing. They recognize that
I’m doing something innovative, that I know
Chasing Excellence: An Interview with Joel Korte of Chase Bliss Audio