Finally an affordable signal blender!

[RissKippery]

I'm about to pull the trigger on the Old Blood for sure! Especially at that price and especially after reading the negative reviews on Sweetwater about the EHX Tri Parallel Mixer.

Couple of questions for @RissKippery , do you notice any noise in the loops? Any low end loss?

I paid close attention and listened for noise or hiss or weakness in signal. I heard nothing of the sort. The phase inversion buttons on both loops are handy as well, although I’ve only had to use one of them once. Was very surprised by the quality of this box.

 

[catcauphonic]

I'm about to pull the trigger on the Old Blood for sure! Especially at that price and especially after reading the negative reviews on Sweetwater about the EHX Tri Parallel Mixer.

Couple of questions for @RissKippery , do you notice any noise in the loops? Any low end loss?

I saw one today for the first time in person at The Bass Shop in West Seattle... It was much much smaller than it looked in photos isolated by itself, which is a plus. I believe they were selling it for $129 (not counting a 10-15% off sale of their current stock? Best check their website to be sure.)

I knew I had better bail once I got to the pedal section... I already overspent this months ideal

 

[RissKippery]

I saw one today for the first time in person at The Bass Shop in West Seattle... It was much much smaller than it looked in photos isolated by itself, which is a plus. I believe they were selling it for $129 (not counting a 10-15% off sale of their current stock? Best check their website to be sure.)

I knew I had better bail once I got to the pedal section... I already overspent this months ideal

Yes, it is much smaller than I thought it would be as well. Also, that’s a cool shop. I’m in there sometimes too.

 

[Albino RyNo]

Ordered mine last night! I'm so excited to start experimenting with parallel effects. I love the idea of being able to switch the clean blend in and out also.

 

[cavemanbass]

Ordered mine last night! I'm so excited to start experimenting with parallel effects. I love the idea of being able to switch the clean blend in and out also.

Sweet looking pedal, nice that they included phase switches. That is the big omission on BossLS2, makes it unusable in lot of cases.

 

[catcauphonic]

Sweet looking pedal, nice that they included phase switches. That is the big omission on BossLS2, makes it unusable in lot of cases.

Does anybody have any experience with certain pedals being out of phase? If so, which ones??

At some point I've run all of my dirts, octaves, and modulations (about 25 total) thru both the LS-2 and Switchblade Pro (that has an internal phase inverter), but I have yet to run into one that was out of phase when running parallel.

 

[JCooper]

It’s been a couple years, but I believe that I ran into that issue with my Rusty Box in a loop of the LS-2, I was trying to use it as distortion when needed.
(Because that ‘boost’ volume can be a lot!)
I know that there were a couple others...

 

[Somanytoys]

I love the Rusty Box, and that boost does make a big difference. But it’s made to emulate a Traynor TS 50B head pretty perfectly, so it does what it’s supposed to.

The boost on the TS 50B is pretty dramatic, as well as the TS 25B.

Don't know if you’ve tried it yet, but the Rusty Box is also very cool using it as a preamp out of the other output, into a poweramp or an amp’s loop return.

 

[JCooper]

(I actually have tried into effects return before....turns out I’m ok stacking preamps sometimes)

FWIW, I don’t have the LS-2 anymore but I do still have the Rusty Box..!

 

[Somanytoys]

Very wise choice!

I know what you mean, but that Box has such a unique sound, and it will go pretty heavy on its own.

I’m sure it’s also cool stacked.

 

[JCooper]

For some inexplicable reason, I haven’t obtained one of these signal blenders yet.
But I am getting close....
Any new observations or encouragement?

 

[sifrancis]

I've got an OBNE Signal Blender on it's way to me, and I'm very excited to for it's imminent arrival (current ETA is tuesday).
I had considered the Klein Bottle, and the EHX Tri Parallel Mixer.

Ultimately the Old Blood won out due to cost and feature set - the dedicated foot switch for clean, form factor (top mounted jacks), simplicity, and flexible footswitching with momentary possibilities all add up to make it ideal for my performance purposes.

I can see myself investing in the Klein Bottle at some point - the sheer amount of routing possibilities within that pedal open up some exciting vistas for sound design.

In my lack fo patience waiting for it's arrival I did want to ask a question of those that already use the signal blender - are the individual loops capable of boost?
For instance my intended use for mine is to have a Boss OC-2 in one loop with the Oct 1 on full and clean/oct2 off. I can then use the solo "synth" voice of the OC-2 as well as a blended octave with my clean, and then the second loop will likely have an EQD Hoof Reaper, again giving me the option to add a clean blend to any of it's fuzz voices as well as stack it with the OC-2....
Anyway, I was hoping that the Old Blood Signal Blender would be able to boost the return from the OC-2 to make up for it's inherent volume drop when using the Oct-1 voice in solo.
Fine if it doesn't as I can just add a boost to the loop, but it would neat if the signal blender was capable of handling that itself.

Cheers!

 

[RissKippery]

I've got an OBNE Signal Blender on it's way to me, and I'm very excited to for it's imminent arrival (current ETA is tuesday).
I had considered the Klein Bottle, and the EHX Tri Parallel Mixer.

Ultimately the Old Blood won out due to cost and feature set - the dedicated foot switch for clean, form factor (top mounted jacks), simplicity, and flexible footswitching with momentary possibilities all add up to make it ideal for my performance purposes.

I can see myself investing in the Klein Bottle at some point - the sheer amount of routing possibilities within that pedal open up some exciting vistas for sound design.

In my lack fo patience waiting for it's arrival I did want to ask a question of those that already use the signal blender - are the individual loops capable of boost?
For instance my intended use for mine is to have a Boss OC-2 in one loop with the Oct 1 on full and clean/oct2 off. I can then use the solo "synth" voice of the OC-2 as well as a blended octave with my clean, and then the second loop will likely have an EQD Hoof Reaper, again giving me the option to add a clean blend to any of it's fuzz voices as well as stack it with the OC-2....
Anyway, I was hoping that the Old Blood Signal Blender would be able to boost the return from the OC-2 to make up for it's inherent volume drop when using the Oct-1 voice in solo.
Fine if it doesn't as I can just add a boost to the loop, but it would neat if the signal blender was capable of handling that itself.

Cheers!

Yes, it is certainly capable of boosting. I’ve found unity around 1 or 2 mostly.

 

[sifrancis]

Yes, it is certainly capable of boosting. I’ve found unity around 1 or 2 mostly.

Perfect!
That seemed the case, but I could find anywhere that was explicitly stated - great to hear.

 

[Somanytoys]

For some inexplicable reason, I haven’t obtained one of these signal blenders yet.
But I am getting close....
Any new observations or encouragement?

The signal blending pedals that I have are the Lehle Parallel L, an Xotic Stereo X Blender and the Klein Bottle. All are very well made. And kind of expensive.

Lehle works well for blending in a single pedal (or chain), has “knobs” for dry & effect level and mix.(don’t think then M model does).

Stereo X will blend up to 3 pedals (or chains), with mix controls for the first 2, but the 3rd is a static 50/50 blend. The only drawback (to me) is it only has a mono input, but it has stereo sends, receives and outputs. Kind of becomes a splitter for stereo.

The Klein Bottle is only mono for all ons & outs. It has a main output volume, a dry level, a trails switch and a phase inversion knob for the 1st channel.

It will blend up to 3 pedals or chains. Each channel has a knob for pre, mix, hpf and lpf shelving, a footswitch to activate the channel and a volume for the channel’s direct signal into the mix.

There are also controls to send 1 channel directly to another (or both others) in series. The channel volume allows you to mute the channel output into the mix, but still allow it flow it into the other channel(s), so that only the combination of the channels is mixed into the main signal path.

An example would be dirt in channel 1, channel volume down, and sent to channel 2, that has delay. In that case, you won’t hear the distortion by itself in parallel with the signal, only the distortion into the delay. It’s possible that you can do it so that only the repeats will have distortion, if you can defeat the dry signal from the delay. This maybe could accomplished by putting the delay on channel 1 and using the phase inverter to go all wet, distortion in channel 2 sent back to ch 1.
I don’t really know if that will work, I just thought of that example and rolled that possibility out as I typed. May have to try it.

It’s overkill for a lot of purposes, especially practical ones, but it’s incredibly powerful and the possibilities seem insane.

 

[yberwaffe]

I saw this was released today, and thought it would be very useful for us bass players trying to blend in distortion overdrive. I've had Old Blood pedals in the past, and they were all built great and sounded even better.

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Seems like a nice switcher.
But I would have liked a picture of the connector panel and some kind of downloadable manual.
Their "explains it all" video is the worst I have ever seen.
They have to do better than this to woo me in their direction so I'm looking for alternatives to invest in.

 

[RissKippery]

Seems like a nice switcher.
But I would have liked a picture of the connector panel and some kind of downloadable manual.
Their "explains it all" video is the worst I have ever seen.
They have to do better than this to woo me in their direction so I'm looking for alternatives to invest in.

I can post a pic of the manual of that helps. It’s really a great blender. One of the best IMO.

 

[Peaveylover]

Seems like a nice switcher.
But I would have liked a picture of the connector panel and some kind of downloadable manual.
Their "explains it all" video is the worst I have ever seen.
They have to do better than this to woo me in their direction so I'm looking for alternatives to invest in.

I agree. That "explains it all" video was massive cringe. Made me actively not want the pedal, even though I am interested in it.

 

[RissKippery]

I agree. That "explains it all" video was massive cringe. Made me actively not want the pedal, even though I am interested in it.

I was hoping for more from that video as well, but I chalked it up to their "style" of marketing/their brand. I do enjoy their videos for that reason. I'd imagine it's hard to stand out in the pedal world, so I give them credit for creating an image. It's also, not a terribly complicated concept, Signal Blender, so maybe they figured people wouldn't want an explanation but more of a showcase of some creative uses? Could be.

 

[yberwaffe]

I was hoping for more from that video as well, but I chalked it up to their "style" of marketing/their brand. I do enjoy their videos for that reason. I'd imagine it's hard to stand out in the pedal world, so I give them credit for creating an image. It's also, not a terribly complicated concept, Signal Blender, so maybe they figured people wouldn't want an explanation but more of a showcase of some creative uses? Could be.

I'm sure their marketing would have been a hit in 1969's summer of love, but these days ?
I'm too old for this.