seeing MIDI controllers come out now that
strap on to a guitar. I haven’t tried it yet, but
you can patch the knobs on there to directly
control the parameters on my pedals. Why
not? It’s all digital control and the language
everyone speaks is MIDI. The first thing I do
when I design a delay is make one of those
knobs control feedback and another control
wet/dry mix. Sonic madness available right
on your guitar, leaves the pedals on the floor,
and retains an all analog signal path!
TR: Why go to such great lengths to
digitally control an analog signal path?
JK: One of the biggest advantages is that
you can instantly save and recall presets. This
is a really powerful feature, especially for
those of us who love analog pedals. An issue
I’ve always had with analog pedals is that I
get scared to change something away from
a setting I really love because I don’t want to
lose it. You don’t have to worry about that
with my pedals. The other great thing is that
you can make sounds that simply didn’t exist
with standard analog pedals. You can pretty
much control anything any way that you
want. The only limit is your imagination.
TR: What type of customer do you cater
to, or do you create pedals that interest
you, and then hope others will like it as
well?
JK: I guess my main motivation is to make
stuff that other people haven’t, but of course
it has to be interesting to me. The MkIIs
were a bit of a departure to that, because
they addressed very specific customer
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feedback from MkI users. I’m really grateful
for this because I think my customer’s
feedback was excellent and has resulted in
better products. In this way I think of many
of my customers as “collaborators”
because they are literally helping me
design my products. I think this is one
of the advantages of supporting a smaller,
boutique builder. A customer can suggest
something that can easily make its way
into a product, but larger companies
generally just sell stuff that they think will
move a lot of units. Unfortunately, this
usually results in the same old circuits being
repackaged over and over again without
much innovation happening.
TR: Is there a certain type of musician or
maybe musical genre that seems to
gravitate to your pedals?
JK: I’ve been seeing the Warped Vinyl all
over the place. I’m biased of course, but I
think my pedals just sound great, so you
don’t necessarily have to be an adventurous
tweaker type of player to enjoy them. You
can use them in a pretty classic way, but
enjoy the ability to save presets in the
analog realm. That said, they definitely
appeal to the type of people that really
want to experiment with new sounds, but
I think these types of players exist in almost
every genre.
TR: Looking out on the horizon, do you
see other types of effects you might
create, such as a delay, reverb, and what
about dirt pedals—fuzz or overdrives, or
maybe something completely different?
Chasing Excellence: An Interview with Joel Korte of Chase Bliss Audio