The Chase Bliss Audio Automatone Preamp MKII Pedal was developed with Benson Amps to create a very innovative and versatile pedal that can be a preamp, overdrive or fuzz, it has a 3 band EQ with parametric mid control, 30 on board preset slots and all parameters controllable by MIDI.

The Automatone started life as a Benson preamp pedal (which is based on their Chimera 30 watt guitar amplifier but substitutes FET transistors for the tubes giving an amp like tone with rich harmonics), Chase Bliss expanded on this by adding visually intuitive slidable faders for EQ, volume and gain controls and 'arcade' style switches on the front of the pedal for more in depth sound shaping (the switch LED colour will match the text on the pedal to show you which option is currently selected). The Diode switch expands the overdrive sounds available with three diode clipping options: FET transistor clipping, symmetrical silicon like a Tube Screamer and asymmetrical germanium clipping like a Klon Centaur, they also added a whole fuzz circuit to the pedal (modded Fuzz Face style), sitting at the front of the signal path it can be independently switched on and off and then you can choose between an open sound or gated for spluttery fuzz, there's also an internal trim pot to adjust the gain of the fuzz if required. The parametric mid control is thanks to their Condor EQ pedal, the Mids fader boosts or cuts middle frequencies by up to 18 dB (with the fader in the centre mids are unaffected, higher positions boost and lower positions cut) and you can set the mid frequency being adjusted with the Freq fader, all the way down is around 150 Hz and all the way up is a little over 4 kHz. The Q switch selects the bandwidth of the mid frequencies being adjusted from a wider curve, a focused curve and a very narrow curve (a wider curve will boost more frequencies either side of the one being targeted, a narrow curve will hone in on very specific frequencies) and the Mids switch allows you to move the position of the mid controls to before or after the other controls (Pre is after fuzz and before everything else, Post is after bass, treble and gain but still before volume).

The faders control Volume, Treble, Mids, Mid Frequency, Bass, and Gain, you can adjust these either manually or through presets, when selecting the next preset the tone changes instantly and the motorised faders jump to that preset's saved position, the vertical position of the fader on the front of the pedal gives a clear visual reference for the current EQ and gain values allowing you to quickly and easily check and change things on the fly. Presets can be recalled via the Preset footswitch, this toggles through 10 presets per bank (numbered 0-9, the current preset is displayed by the LED in the centre of the footswitches) and holding the footswitch will select between the three banks (30 preset slots in total). The Jump arcade button lets you quickly skip to either preset 0 or 5 from any preset and you can also create a subset within a bank so when jump is active the Preset footswitch will scroll through your desired number of presets before returning to 0 or 5 (e.g. if you have a preset for a verse tone in slot 0 and then a preset for a chorus tone in slot 1 you can set the pedal to cycle between just slots 0 and 1 when pressing the Preset footswitch).

The Chase Bliss Audio Automatone Preamp MKII Pedal has a 1/4" input jack for a TRS expression pedal or control voltage (for CV use a TRS cable with the ring floating), any of the faders can be controlled by the expression pedal and this can saved per preset or as a global setting (e.g. you could have volume be adjusted by the expression pedal across all presets). The pedal also features MIDI in and thru jacks, all parameters are controllable by MIDI e.g. engage/disengage the pedal, recall up to 30 presets, move faders and change the arcade switch selection.

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