Chase Bliss and Analog Man’s Brothers AM: King of Tone, Reinvented for the Patch Generation

Chase Bliss’s Brothers AM isn’t just another overdrive pedal—it’s the result of a five-year collaboration with Analog Man, aiming to capture the revered tones of the King of Tone. The video opens with Joel from Chase Bliss expressing genuine excitement about working alongside Mike from Analog Man, highlighting the project’s personal significance and the challenge of translating a legend into a new format.

The King of Tone’s reputation precedes it, and Brothers AM sets out to channel that same versatility and sonic magic. The goal, as stated, is to bring the King of Tone’s celebrated sounds and under-the-hood tweakability into a more accessible and flexible package. This isn’t just homage—it’s an attempt to make those iconic textures available to a wider audience, while staying true to the original’s spirit.

One of Brothers AM’s defining features is its hybrid design: a fully analog signal path under the command of digital control. This means you get the authentic, uncoloured tone purists crave, but with the added bonus of storing and recalling presets—a rarity in the world of classic drive circuits.

This approach allows for a level of flexibility and repeatability that’s usually the domain of digital effects. The video makes it clear that this isn’t a compromise; rather, it’s a way to bring hidden functions like mode switching and presence adjustment to the surface, making them accessible in real time and easily savable for performance or studio use.

Brothers AM features two independent channels, each colour-coded for clarity—yellow for channel one and salmon for channel two—mirroring the duality of the original King of Tone. Each channel offers three selectable modes: distortion, overdrive, and boost. These aren’t just labels; they represent distinct clipping behaviours and headroom characteristics, all accessible via a dedicated mode switch.

The demo walks through each mode, demonstrating how boost mode offers maximum headroom and an open sound, overdrive delivers the King of Tone’s signature soft clipping, and distortion brings in harder, more aggressive clipping. The ability to mix and match these modes across both channels encourages experimentation, letting users discover combinations and voicings that might surprise even seasoned pedal aficionados.

Chase Bliss has taken user control seriously, bringing previously hidden parameters to the fore. The presence control, traditionally an internal trim pot on the King of Tone, is now easily accessible—hold a switch and turn the tone knob to dial in the upper treble response for each channel. The video demonstrates how this can dramatically brighten or darken the sound, with the default setting being fully counterclockwise for a more classic tone.

Dip switches abound, offering high gain modifications, momentary bypass, and even a presence link function that ties the tone and presence controls together for more dramatic sweeps. These options are not just for show; they’re designed to let users tailor the pedal’s response to their rig and playing style, whether that means subtle tweaks or radical transformations.

Expression pedal and MIDI control are also on tap, allowing for real-time manipulation of any knob, individually or simultaneously. The master dip switch converts channel two’s volume into a global master volume, which is particularly useful for taming volume jumps when stacking channels or slamming one into the other. All these features add up to a pedal that’s as much a modular tone platform as it is a classic drive box.