Technically old gear day, but I haven't posted in a while and I'm sure you have all been losing sleep and are all dying to know about the exciting new iterations of my pedalboard and yearning to hear my exhaustive reviews of expensive pedals bought solely for psychological validation and my obsession with the purity of my signal chain. Some people obsess over the purity of family trees. Fuck that shit. Obsessing over the purity of your signal chain is fine though. Only the highest quality components for my BLOODLINE OF TONE.
I want a lot of routing on my board for various reasons. Stereo rig, VSTs, etc. etc. etc. AB, ABY, ABC, ZGF.5, MILF, WASP, etc.. You name it. I want all the sick routing acronyms at my fingertips. If its a routing config with an acronym style abbreviation to represent the signal flow I want it.
Originally I went with the MXR box because I love MXR products. This was in spite of the fact that it had a shit ton of negative reviews on sites like sweetwater for being a noisy piece of shit. I just brushed them off because I was like, "I've owned a shit ton of MXR products, this sounds like user error, I've never had a bad MXR product".
Anyways, the MXR box is OK, but is actually noisy in many situations where you have multiple things hooked up. Which is part and parcel for some multi amp ABY configs, but was still a downer. Reviews weren't wrong. It's more useful as a sort of routing junction than any sort of splitter, but it's OK for like $60. I hear the Morleys are OK too, but I've attempted to order two now only to be informed after paying they are backordered to the tune of a 3-6 month wait.
I held off going for the Lehle stuff, because it is like five times as expensive and is the "premium stuff David Gilmour uses", but AB routing boxes are pretty universal gear, you have to only buy them once. Couldn't find anything else at the price point in between I really felt confident buying.
This isn't an ABY, this is an ABC in reverse into an AB (not an ABY, possibly its one flaw, but it is designed like that for noise reasons). So I can switch between my wireless and going wired at the beginning of my signal chain and then have AB switching up next. Haven't figured out what to use the third input for yet, two of the inputs have adjustable pots for hooking up different instruments and equalizing volumes between them. Cool feature, more useful to like P&W bassists though. All my electrics have about the same level of output in terms of pickups.
I originally thought I would have to accomplish this with two boxes, because I wanted multiple junctions in my signal chain with both switchable ins (which you can accomplish with passive AB poxes in reverse, but only passive, actives don't run in reverse) into regular.
This ones an ABC into an AB and also bills itself as a DI. Great piece of hardware. Price is premium, and this particular unit is discontinued, but it's worth it if it's the specific functionality you need and you want something you never have to worry about.
I actually want another Lehle unit in my FX loop for even more routing options, but $300 to accomplish some premium routing on a pedalboard is rich enough for my blood at the unit and I can use the MXR in contexts where it's not an ABY. The MXR is still a decent box to like, reroute the location of where to plug stuff in on your board, and the thru functionality is cool, but some setups aren't possible without ridiculous noise.
This particular unit is fully Midi programmable apparently, but I don't like boards that use Midi, not visceral enough for me, too fiddly, can't speak to its functionality there. I like '70s style WYSIWYG clearly labelled analog controls that are all pots and switches, never been a fan of making things overly complex with MIDI.
The finish is also super heavy duty and granular/heavy coat. As badass as that is, it also traps dusts and the cleaning products used to remove dust. This unfortunately results in the weird semi wet look if you try to wipe it down with a lysol wipe before taking photos. I believe the "Semi moist" finish is an upcharge if you order it that way.
The ULTRA BOUTIQUE diffusion lenses they put in front of the LED diodes are also super cool and are easier to recognize at a glance what is going on. Rather than being blinded. They also make it easier to photograph for cork sniffery without everything turning into a low definition mess due to loads of blinky lights in low light conditions. More pedals should have diffusion lenses in front of their blinding LEDs to avoid the blinding flair.
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