ilovefuzz.com

Mike should have a forum here.

What other Mike pedals are worth checking out?

Depends on if you want one of his own - If so Salt Booster for sure as well.

As for clones he has a whole slew of them. Seriously spend a few hours this weekend just listening to the demos. I love the Trystie OD and am a fan of the MI Audio Crucnh Box as well. He has quite a few more worth checking out as well.

MannequinRaces wrote:I just bought a reissue Fender Blender off of Amazon for $132. I don't notice a volume drop with mine. Might be something to look into.

http://www.amazon.com/Fender-Blender-Cu ... B000Z23WHQ

I'm with you... I own one and I don't really notice the drop. If there is one I've successfully worked around it by matching up the volumes I want to hear when I hit the buttons... I think it's mainly people comparing to the originals which I have never had. Maybe that's why it's not such a big deal to me.

The worst volume drop I heard was from the Danelectro DanEcho. Now THAT'S a volume drop!

frankz00 wrote:

MannequinRaces wrote:I just bought a reissue Fender Blender off of Amazon for $132. I don't notice a volume drop with mine. Might be something to look into.

http://www.amazon.com/Fender-Blender-Cu ... B000Z23WHQ

I'm with you... I own one and I don't really notice the drop. If there is one I've successfully worked around it by matching up the volumes I want to hear when I hit the buttons... I think it's mainly people comparing to the originals which I have never had. Maybe that's why it's not such a big deal to me.

The worst volume drop I heard was from the Danelectro DanEcho. Now THAT'S a volume drop!

Agreed. I don't have an original to compare mine to either. If there is a volume it's nothing serious. I've never used a DanEcho before but I believe it!

MannequinRaces wrote:

frankz00 wrote:Agreed. I don't have an original to compare mine to either. If there is a volume it's nothing serious. I've never used a DanEcho before but I believe it!

There's a big difference between the original and the reissue. Not just the volume drop but the sound too. The RI sounds like something that kinda sounds what you think a Blender sounds like, but side by side there's no comparison really. A bit like the way a DL4 can kinda sound like an echoplex, but doesn't really.

I'm pretty sure John Lyons has made Blender clones in the past
You can still find originals -- be patient and buy one of those? (I had mine up for sale but sold enough other stuff I get to keep it )

devnulljp wrote:

MannequinRaces wrote:

frankz00 wrote:Agreed. I don't have an original to compare mine to either. If there is a volume drop it's nothing serious. I've never used a DanEcho before but I believe it!

There's a big difference between the original and the reissue. Not just the volume drop but the sound too. The RI sounds like something that kinda sounds what you think a Blender sounds like, but side by side there's no comparison really. A bit like the way a DL4 can kinda sound like an echoplex, but doesn't really.

I'm pretty sure John Lyons has made Blender clones in the past
You can still find originals -- be patient and buy one of those? (I had mine up for sale but sold enough other stuff I get to keep it )

I would love to own an original but had to settle for the reissue (strapped for cash). Seems like the originals are always better; plus they just have that special mojo!

Has anyone tried the RonSound Flender? I wonder if that's better than the RI and closer to the original....

Here we go, came today.

That looks amazing. definitely fill us in on how it sounds.

Get a vintage one. No comparison.

EDIT: To be clear I meant no comparison btwn the original and the RI. Never played the Mike one...

The one Mike built me is made to '76 specs, and looks cooler than a real Fender Blender IMO. Can't wait to try it out.

Sockgazer wrote:The one Mike built me is made to '76 specs, and looks cooler than a real Fender Blender IMO. Can't wait to try it out.

Post some sound clips!

Here we go.

http://www.box.net/shared/u2n33rg8rq

The demo's not the best quality but it's pretty decent. I also forgot to turn the volume up higher, so the fuzz is a bit lower than the cleans. Oops.

This pedal was a little different to what I thought. It was a little less of an "octave" fuzz, but the scrambled tones really surprise me. Basically I love the big crazy sound of scrambled fuzz for rhythm work, but too often it sounds too processed and artifical, and very compressed; it sucks in while playing. Some of the higher settings on the blender are just like that which is annoying, but I can turn stuff way down and still get the scrambling effect, it sounds great like this, like a more natural distortion. It's something I can plant in a song in place of "normal" overdrive while sounding different, exactly what I was looking for in a Fuzz, but was expecting that more of the Blue Box or Boss HM-2.

The noise gate on this is amazing too(could be different to the original, unsure). You can hear some crazy feedback when I play with the Blend knob too.

This is a great pedal overall. While it's kind of stuck within one "range" of sounds, I feel that within that range it's a lot more versatile and useful within that range than a lot of scramble/octave fuzzes, and has some very organic sounding tones in there, as well as some entertainingly harsh ones. A lot of the higher settings are pretty much what I expected, having that spluttery sitar quality.

The boost didn't seem all that useful to me. I imagine if you need a serious lower mids bump it would be very useful, but made things a bit airy and muddy on a lot of settings for me. I'm really glad I got the '76 spec one so I don't experience the volume drop without engaging the boost. The boost can make for some seriously big, fat sounding rhythm tones, but does also cancel out some of the delicious metallic harshness.

Pretty great overall. Dunno how it compares to the reissues.