Chase Bliss Automatone Preamp MKII vs Benson Preamp

Episode Transcript

Note: a machine made this, so it’s not perfect, but if you’re hearing impaired and have any questions about what we said, please feel free to ask us in the comments or send us an email with the form below. 

Hey, I’m Emily from get offset and I’m a little in the corner today. I’m taking up a little less space than usual because I needed more space to showcase the Benson original preamp pedal versus the chase bliss, automatone preamp MKII. These are essentially a based on the same circuit and from, The Benson amplifiers.

I believe someone told me it was pronounced Ky-mer-a. and for some reason I’ve heard it pronounced five ways. I believe that person so, I’m running it to the TunaTone and to strive and already in round B into big shot AB wise switcher. And, it’s true. Bypass switch by radio. And we’re gonna see, how these two circuits or pedals I should say differ and how they’re the same.

here’s a couple of ways they differ. This does not miss the original Benson Preamp pedal does not have mids. This has a, the chase supposed atomic tone has mids that can be either placed before or after the preamp circuit. And you can control the range from 150 Hertz to 4,000 hertz. so we won’t be touching those in this demo because that’s an obvious difference.

The other big obvious difference, differences are, the clipping diodes, which are not present in the vents and preamps. So we’ll be talking about those and the fuzz options that aren’t present and the Benson preamp. So if you want to hear those features, check out the link in the description to the original and entire.

Benson, sash, chase bliss, preamp, automatone MKII. There’s a lot of things. I think that, I just don’t remember the order of the words. I’m sorry about that. So let’s start with everything in the middle, except for the dry. I wish I’m turning all the way down for now. So let’s hear how that sounds.

First on the chase bliss.

And now we’re going to switch to the Benson preamp.

Ooh, can’t hear anything. I wonder why that is it. Could it be because you have to have the drive up. Ah,

so that’s the first difference I noticed when playing these two guys side by side is that you have to have the gain on the Benson, turned up with snitch, before anything is audible. And I don’t think that’s super uncommon with dirt pedals. I was actually kind of surprised when, you can have this all the way down and still.

Hear things. So let’s play that again,

back to the chase bliss.

let’s throw the volume to try to compensate there.

Back over to the Chase Bliss

Okay. So to my ear, that’s very similar. And it sounds pretty good. it’s a little different, but it has the same kind of voice and character, as the other one does. So let’s turn the. Bass and the treble down all the way. Let me see what she wants. So I’m on the Benson. Let’s go to the chase bliss and turn that volume up of smudge.

I know the Benson.

Again, and unsurprisingly, sound very similar let’s dime the treble.

Chase bliss.

Benson

and let’s crank the base as well. Chase Bliss

now let’s have some real fun. I’m going to turn the volume down. So about a quarter and I’m going to turn the gain up to noon and the middle on both of these. And I’m going to check my sound levels really quick list. So bear with me.

alright. Cool.

Alright. Chase Bliss

Now let’s crank that gain up all the way and check my levels again, because I don’t want to

Move to the Benson.

if you couldn’t hear which one I was bouncing back between there, I couldn’t either. I think that they, they, that the, this, this, Chase Bliss pedal is a pretty true recreation of the basics of the Benson preamp, obviously with a ton of other bells and whistles. I think that you can get, the Benson preamps.

I think there’s $250 new. I’m pretty sure you can get them for around just North of 200 on reverb.com. I was looking at them the other day. The Automatone is over $700. again, with a lot of other features, including presets, including, phys a diet of clipping and mids, which are all very, very cool things to, to have.

so it’s kind of up to you. If you think that the Benson preamp is it, does it for you any, you don’t want all the other bells and whistles and yeah, you don’t need this automatone. I mean, nobody, nobody needs this, but it’s pretty dope and cool and fun. And I really, really like it a lot.

obviously this room has less power requirements and I’m pretty sure has a battery clip inside. This is 500 man power. Doesn’t come with a power supply, a bit of a power hog. You can see the size comparison. This is like, I would say two and a half of these long slash size. And then like it’s twice as tall.

So those are just some, some comparisons, with it. It’s a really great recreation of what I think is one of the best, preamps out there. And I think that chase bliss. they, they, Joel cores course, and everybody there took it, took it a step further. And it’s a, it’s a really great product. In my opinion, obviously it’s a higher price product.

Not everybody’s gonna justify getting this pedal. but the Benson, the Benson preamp original one sounds fantastic and its own. Right. we don’t have any bad things to say about any of them. Again, I’m Emily. This is good offset, please. Like comment, subscribe, check out the podcast if you want to, yeah, until next time.

Goodbye.