Chase Bliss Gravitas Tremolo
The Chase Bliss Gravitas with a Telecaster and the Benson Vincent — clean and dirt — is exactly as good as it sounds. Welcome back to Edge of Breakup.
In this episode the Chase Bliss Gravitas Analog Tremolo takes another run through its paces — this time with a Telecaster loaded with Lollar Pickups, into the Benson Amps Vincent clean and dirt channels.
If you missed the first Gravitas demo, the short version: the Gravitas is 100% analog signal path, built around Analog Devices AD823 op-amps, with a digital brain controlling every parameter for a depth of modulation control that purely analog circuits can't achieve. It is discontinued — find one used.
This demo goes deeper into two specific features that weren't fully explored in the first video.
Waveform mixing. The Gravitas lets you set the initial waveform shape and the end waveform shape independently — the tremolo morphs between them over the cycle. Sine to Sine is the classic smooth tremolo. Both to Square is the choppy, gated stutter. But Sine to Square, Triangle to Sine, or any combination in between creates hybrid tremolo characters that are genuinely their own sounds. Fast Square-to-Sine mimics reverse guitar attack — the note starts with a sharp cut and releases softly, the opposite of natural guitar decay. That's at 05:05.
The Ramp knob. When assigned via dipswitch to Rate, the Ramp causes the tremolo speed to change gradually over time — it accelerates and decelerates on a curve set by the Ramp knob. The result at moderate settings is an ebb-and-flow tremolo that breathes on its own schedule, independent of your playing. When assigned to Tone, the Ramp cycles the tonal shaping across the amplitude tremolo — harmonic tremolo character appearing and disappearing at a rate separate from the main Rate control. The exploration from 09:31 onward is where this gets genuinely strange and useful.
This pedal is discontinued. Find one while you can.
🔍 Search for Chase Bliss Gravitas on Reverb: https://reverb.com/marketplace?query=chase+bliss+gravitas
🔊 Benson Amps: https://www.bensonamps.com/guitar-amplifiers
🎸 Lollar Pickups: https://www.lollarguitars.com/lollar-pickups
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🎸 Telecaster | Lollar Pickups
🎛️ Chase Bliss Audio Gravitas | Analog Tremolo | Waveform Mixing | Ramp | Dipswitches
🔊 Benson Amps Vincent
