Chompi Club Vs Chase Bliss Treasure Island Limited Edition + New Firmware
4,3 / 5,0 | 
[Update 9 May 2024] Fun, sea-themed graphics highlight Chompi/Chase Bliss collaboration, comes with firmware for routing through external effects.
Chompi Club Treasure Island Edition
Everybody’s favourite portable sampler has a fun new coat of paint. To celebrate the teaming up of Chompi Club with effects company Chase Bliss at Superbooth 24, there’s a new limited edition model: Treasure Island.
“A dreamy Chompi dressed in lagoon blue, the panels have a subtle translucence that seems to color-shift like the sea,” says the company on its website. The enclosure panels are also available as a separate set should you already own a Chompi and just want the fun graphics.
Along with the nautical-themed graphics, the Treasure Island model comes with a limited edition sample pack put together by Chase Bliss. You’ll receive an email with a download link for the pack when your order ships. You also get a Chase Bliss x Chompi sticker.
New Chompi Firmware
The Treasure Island Edition comes preloaded with firmware update version 1.0.9, which allows for proper effects send and return routing using the master out and aux input, respectively.
The firmware is available for free for all Chompi owners.
Treasure Island Edition is now available for preorder for €614.95. The preorder window closes at the end of May so hurry if you fancy a cruise on the sampler seas. Chompi Club plans to fulfil orders in early summer (June and July 2024).
Chase Bliss and Chompi will be running a pop-up booth together at Superbooth 24.
- Chompi preorder page
[16 January 2024 – original post by Robin Vincent] Chompi Club invites you to explore the magical world of sound design through a very cute “Tape-Music” device that’s now available in a Midnight Edition.
Chompi Sampler Midnight Edition
Following on from last year’s massively successful Kickstarter campaign, Chompi Club has a special Midnight Edition coming along this February. It has all-black keycaps and a transport knob and even comes with a CHOMPI keychain. The cost is $625 plus taxes and you can preorder now.
Chompi Club
(Original post from March 2023). It looks amazing. Like something from the Lego movie brought into real life. Everything about it is oversized, which gives it a deliberately toy-like quality. It has big buttons, big knobs, that 2-octave row of clacky keys and a whacking great big carry-handle. It’s also decked out in child-friendly colours and adorable characters. Is there any way to take this seriously?
Maybe that’s the point. Maybe Chompi Club is trying to bring the fun back into sampling and music-making.
The facts
Chompi Club has a “one of a kind” sampling engine, multi-effects and a tape-style looper. The design emphasises speed and usability with lots of one-button-to-action functions. Press on the Chompi button (that’s presumably the name of the adorable character) and you are instantly sampling to the keyboard. Hit Loop and you are looping, grab the filter knob for filtering, stand and endpoints on the sample knobs and so on. If you’ve played with a SmplTrek or SP404 then you probably can’t believe such a simple interface could be possible.
Chompi says the screenless design invites exploration.
The sampler can handle 7 voices of polyphony and has a recording time of over 6 hours. There are 40 slots for presets. You can adjust the playback speed and direction, fix start and end points and apply an Attack/Decay envelope. Then there’s a single-knob effects section with filters, lo-fi effects and granular reverb/delay effects.
The Tape Looper offers sound-on-sound looping with transport controls, scrubbing, playback speed and direction and, apparently, other additional features to be found by advanced users. The video describes it really nicely and gives a good demo of what could be a really unique instrument.
It’s powered by USB-C, with no mention of batteries, and has a built-in microphone, SD card slot, line input and output, headphones and finally, MIDI.
The future
Chompi Club is based on the Electro-Smith Daisy platform and is open source and ready to be turned into all sorts of things. It should arrive on Kickstarter at the end of March for an Early Bird preorder price of $499. That’s not a very toy-like price. Chompi says it was inspired by childhood devices such as the Casio SK-1 and wants to introduce new generations to the magic of music with its fun and “affordable” sampler.
I think it looks great, and I’m very into the concept and simplicity. I guess the price is inevitable, but it might be a barrier as you can get a much more sophisticated Sonicware SmplTrek or Roland SP-404 MkII for around the same, even if they can’t compete on accessibility.
So, will you be joining the Chompi Club?
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18 responses to “Chompi Club Vs Chase Bliss Treasure Island Limited Edition + New Firmware”
Cute is cute. But it’s $500 for the Kickstarter. Then $600-$700 when it gets to production. That part has me scratching my head.
I mean the Koala app for your iPhone will do all that, and it too is fun and cute and wonderful, but it’s about $5 to $10 depending on how fancy you get.
And Pocket Operators are cute and fun and have been around for years. They are only $100-$130 from Teenage Engineering, the company that is the reigning champ of out-of-touch pricing.
Go figure.
I hear you loud and clear! However Chompi will have the physical touch advantage as well as software updates which should push it past Koloa Pad App and TE pocket operators.
gear competing against an app will always be tough!!! Apps are just widely more affordable.
PS. I AM NERDING OUT OVER THE HANDLE!!!!
Sup JohnGTV! I’m a long time fan! hope you are doing great
PEACE
I came here to say “it’s cute but the price is hard to justify”… but I guess everyone agrees already
Toi expensive. You cannot justify the price because the workflow is user friendly. At this price you have an MPC or a SP404MKII, and almost 2 Novation Circuit, or Liven Lofi-12 at 320€.
The sweet spot would be 150~250€ max. At that price the sales would explode and in the end they would certainly recoop their manufacturing and development costs. Too bad…
250 wouldn’t be realistic. You’d need to sell a LOT of unit to be profitable at this price point. Quite frankly 400 would be the minimum but more that 500 is nuts
I would say the price should be around 150$ and even then I wouldnt say its a instant buy…
yup, the price is totally insane.
Lol 500 for a toy? There is nothing innovative about this thing, it does nothing special, and it sounds thin, the sk-1 sounds better and its nearly 40 years old and you can buy it for 5$ at flea markets.
So I’m gonna go with no on this one.
want asap
You can sell anything for any price, and it does look cool. But don’t go throw around words like affordable. This is a design statement. The price could be high due to the new product/ company set up but yeah, I just bought the SPMK2 for the same price and those two are not equal footing. BUT, its fun to look at music gismos…and yes, it let me appreciate the PO KO all that much more.
I would have pulled the trigger at $300.
I was interested, but the way they are running this thing seems very dodgy, just 30 minute after the campaign had started they had already sold 80k, not of the cheapest tier(?!?!?), which was still available at that time. The speed at what they are selling doesn’t seem to reflect their target market (800k in less than 24h). I wouldn’t say its outright scam, but I am personally very suspicious.
Strangely, they sell so fast and all I can see (on every forum) is that most people find it way too expensive. I truly don’t understand how it seems such a success.
I think the people who are taken by the Chompi are not your regular synth nerds chewing the fat on forums. There’s a whole world out there 😀
I think is a wrong description of the product on this page. From when are regulair size knobs and pots oversized? Is now a days micro, regulair and not micro, oversized and big. I think Robin have a micro.
Slim jeans used to be more relaxed than skinny jeans, but now slim jeans are ski9nny jeans, and I guess “athletic” jeans are slim jeans, and skinny jeans are now like spandex yoga pants, even though zoomers have started wearing joggers instead of jeans.
SMH
Highly dubious. 80k that quick for a glorified SK1 aimed at those with an unhealthy interest in all things kinder
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