I love blending clean lows with overdriven mids/highs. I am using Byte Heaven Sugar Britches and Broughton FFXL For That…
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Make all your guitar drives work with bass for ~$100
- Thread starter Makten
- Start date
Old Blood Noise Endeavors has a similar unit that’s $149. It la is the A/B routing options of to Sonicake.
oldbloodnoise.com
Old Blood Noise Endeavors — OBNE Signal Blender
Old Blood Noise Endeavors Signal Blender
oldbloodnoise.com
If you want to get fancy the GFI Duophony has two parallel loops and a few blend tricks, but they come with a price tag.
www.gfisystem.com
Duophony | GFI System webpage
Duophony is our take on the lowly 'parallel blender' pedal. We took the basic concept of blending two effects together to the next level by integrating the classic signal blender functionalities with modern features and intuitive user interface. The result is a solid blending machine, optimized...
www.gfisystem.com
The Portal has that.
None of my pedals need it though.My guess is that it is the exact same circuit board inside. The layout is the same except for the phase buttons, but they might have a separate board. If so, you pay more than twice the price for the exterior design.Old Blood Noise Endeavors has a similar unit that's $149. It la is the A/B routing options of to Sonicake.
Old Blood Noise Endeavors — OBNE Signal Blender
Old Blood Noise Endeavors Signal Blender
The whole point of the thread is that you don't have to get fancy.If you want to get fancy the GFI Duophony has two parallel loops and a few blend tricks, but they come with a price tag.
Duophony | GFI System webpage
Duophony is our take on the lowly 'parallel blender' pedal. We took the basic concept of blending two effects together to the next level by integrating the classic signal blender functionalities with modern features and intuitive user interface. The result is a solid blending machine, optimized...
Started cheap with a 4ch Behringer mixer, then a custom Robot Factory 3ch, a couple Badger 2ch's, and a Saturnworks 5ish ch parallel mixer. These were all fine setups. I will take my Morningstar ML10X all day every day. Made in Singapore. Probably a ton of Chinese electronics. That'd be an "autonomous region" if they shared a border. However you get it done. Just keep the bass yo.
EHX has the triple loop box. $160 but it has an EQ per channel and gain on the send and return per channel.
https://www.sweetwater.com/store/de...4zgvJUeOyWLCnd6goj1jegFa0ihktgwhoCygAQAvD_BwE
EarthQuaker Devices has the Swiss Army Thing which is pricey new, but used ones are available for $130-$150. Not as cheap as the OP, but not extravagant.
https://www.sweetwater.com/store/de...4zgvJUeOyWLCnd6goj1jegFa0ihktgwhoCygAQAvD_BwE
EarthQuaker Devices has the Swiss Army Thing which is pricey new, but used ones are available for $130-$150. Not as cheap as the OP, but not extravagant.
I used to do this with an LS-2. It drove me nuts because I'd always stomp the dirt pedal instead of the blend pedal. It also took up way too much space on a pedalboard.
Up until I bought a Damnation Audio MBD3 a few months ago, I was very happy buying and using cheap dirt pedals such as the DOD Boneshaker, Carsosa, and Source Audio Bass Multiwave.
Up until I bought a Damnation Audio MBD3 a few months ago, I was very happy buying and using cheap dirt pedals such as the DOD Boneshaker, Carsosa, and Source Audio Bass Multiwave.
The main problem with 99% of all drive/distortion pedals for guitar, when used with a bass, is the lack of.....bass. You could modify the electronics by cutting less bass, but that requires some skill and it also often leads to a muddy sound because the low frequencies are now distorted.
There are "one box" solutions for this, but they generally costs a fortune. But, when researching the issue I found a reasonably cheap alternative:
You combine a twin parallell loop stomp pedal, with an EQ pedal. Note that it must be parallell, because that allows you to split the frequencies and join the distorted highs with clean lows.
I chose the Sonicake Portal: https://www.amazon.se/-/en/dp/B0DCNJG9X8?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title
...and the Amuzik bass EQ: https://www.amazon.se/-/en/dp/B09HC5JRVQ?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title
I know, I know. Chinese crap. But I'm not paying four-five times these prices for european or american products, that most likely have internals made in China anyway. They also sound really good. I mean really.
Now, you simply connect the EQ to one of the loops and cut treble and mids to taste. Then you connect whatever distortion pedal you want to the other loop. You could use an additional EQ here, but in most cases it's not necessary thanks to distortion pedals cutting the low end anyway.
Now mix them together with the levels of both loops in parallell mode. And voila, you got a fat, nice distorted sound that is not muddy, because the low end is clean. And you didn't have to break the bank.
View attachment 7194238
Thanks for sharing, the Portal wasn't on my radar, also seems compact and pretty pedalboard friendly.
I've been on a deep dive into my Source Audio pedals and programming my C4 in particular. Have you checked out the routing options in the C4?
I find the "Pre-Effect Ext. Loop" really useful and adds lots of options. From the manual "places the external effect in front of the C4's Voice processor. Choose this option if you wish to create a pre-Voice external effects loop."
There is also the "LoRetain Frequency" (from the manual)
LoRetain Frequency: Rather than a simple Mix control the LoRetain parameter allows you to split the frequency spectrum of your wet signal, meaning that the C4 effect applies only to the frequencies above a certain cut-off point and leaves the lower frequencies dry and unaffected.
I'm still testing my presets, but thought I'd point that out. I'll hopefully post some more on my pedalboard journey thread soon.
Actually, I regret buying the C4. It's amazing and sounds great, but I just don't find any joy what so ever from configuring it using the app. I want physical dials, so I might sell it and get something simpler.
I also only play at home nowadays, and I don't need to be able to get certain sounds with the push of a (pedal) button. And I don't have to fit my stuff on a tiny pedal board either, which makes things a lot easier.
I dived deep into the parallel blend rabbit hole with a previously mentioned ehx tri parallel.
I understand the cost is a priority for the OP but here's my warning: you can run into noise and interference issues really quickly with cheaper pedals. Make sure you budget for a quality isolated power supply. Absolutely worth it from my experience. Pedals come and go, my power supplies always remain.
I understand the cost is a priority for the OP but here's my warning: you can run into noise and interference issues really quickly with cheaper pedals. Make sure you budget for a quality isolated power supply. Absolutely worth it from my experience. Pedals come and go, my power supplies always remain.
This is the way. Crossover split with an EQ block in the high passed split gives great results.
I have both the SoniCake Portal and the EHX Tri Parallel Mixer. The Sonicake is basic parallel mixing, the only small issue is the footswitch makes a tiny pop when engaging the channels due to a hard latching types.
The EHX is soft latching, solid state relays, shelving EQ, separate send/return volume knob whereas the Sonicake portal only adjusts the return, and offers more options when engaging the loops. An example would be selectively shutting off the send switch but leaving the return switch closed as a way to keep the reverb tails going after disengaging the loop.
It comes down to what features matter most to you. Both are versatile, quiet op amps that are very transparent. Tools for the toolbox.
The EHX is soft latching, solid state relays, shelving EQ, separate send/return volume knob whereas the Sonicake portal only adjusts the return, and offers more options when engaging the loops. An example would be selectively shutting off the send switch but leaving the return switch closed as a way to keep the reverb tails going after disengaging the loop.
It comes down to what features matter most to you. Both are versatile, quiet op amps that are very transparent. Tools for the toolbox.
Attachments
I've never played with a looper/blender. Any reason this couldn't be used with a compressor without a blend to add parallel compression? Just making sure I'm not missing something that the blend knob on a compressor would do.
Most loop/blend pedals like this should provide a copy of your dry signal which is what the blend on most compressors will do.
In some cases the blended signal might be colored. For example the Bloop from Damnation adds a parallel clean signal but it is rolled off around 1k. While not a compressor, the Way Huge Pork Loin’s blended “clean” signal is colored, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some compressors have similarly colored “clean/dry” blends. In fact the Seymour Duncan Studio Bass has a switch to allow you to select from three types of clean signals to blend in (low, mid, full).
