Billy Strings Wombtone

Our first signature pedal

written by Joel Korte

Hello everyone, 

We have a new pedal, in the form of an old friend. It’s an analog, envelope-controlled phaser.

It’s a limited release of 3,000 pedals, made in collaboration with Billy Strings. Before I dive into story time, there is one important detail:

This pedal is available in the U.S. only.

I’ll talk about why in the “details” section below.

You can pre-order now, with shipping estimated to start in 2 weeks. Full details on that at the bottom.

Story time

This story is about bluegrass. We start in May 2017.

Our  head  of  artist  relations,  Tyler  Devonald,  saw something  that  caught  his  eye  on  the  Fretboard Journal.  Tyler  is  a  big  fan  of  the  band  Greensky Bluegrass and noticed that Dave Bruzza was using a  Wombtone  on  his  board.  Tyler  reached  out  and connected with the group and showed them some more pedals the next time they were in town.

A  couple  years  later,  I  became  aware  of another bluegrass artist using Wombtone, but not only that – he was collecting every one he could find. He had a bunch. This is how I learned about Billy Strings. It wasn’t  until  years  later  that  I  realized  it  was  Dave Bruzza  who  had  introduced  it  to  Billy  while  they were on tour together.

It struck me. Wombtone has long been a favorite of mine  and  has  never  left  my  personal  pedalboard. And  here’s  this  artist  who  cares  enough  to  start collecting  them.  He  knew  they  were  discontinued and he wanted to be prepared if his should break.

So we started talking about the possibility of bringing Wombtone back.

It  instantly  felt  like  such  a  natural  fit.  I’ve  always been a bit cautious of doing any sort of artist “signature”  type  of  thing  but  in  this  case  I  could clearly  see  the  impact  Wombtone  was  having  on Billy’s  live  set.  There  was  just  no  mistaking  that sound swirling away right in the middle of it all. It felt right.

What it is

I asked Billy how he would modify the Wombtone if we were to make a version together, and that’s when envelope control entered the conversation. Billy had essentially been faking envelope control with an expression pedal, moving it in time with each note.

So we made it for real. It turned out to be way more challenging for me than I initially expected, but I’m so happy with where we landed. I can’t stop playing it - I may have already played this new Wombtone more than any pedal we’ve ever released.

It also has a few other refinements. There’s a new slow mode, increased headroom, and we improved the input stage by using Burr Brown op-amps. 

The Field Guide is ready if you want some more detailed info:

I hope you love it as much as Billy and I do.

Details

Preorders are open now and will be shipped in the order received.

Our target is to start shipping within 2 weeks and have all orders filled by the end of September. 

This pedal is U.S-only for the same reason we discontinued 5 of our pedals last week. It contains a component called an LDR (also known as a “vactrol”) that is not compliant with market access requirements in the UK and EU. 

You can read all about it here.

We do not plan to release any future pedals in region-specific areas. This pedal is a special case because it was already well into production as we began navigating all of this.

Let us know if you have any questions: 
help@chasebliss.com

Thanks for reading!