Blender

First, I would love to meet the man who engineered this product. I ask because i have seen many of fender products, older products, That could produce the most amazing sounds with the most simple and least expensive electronical conponents known to an engineere as primative! A Transistor, 2 capacitors and a few resistors coupled with a switch and a variable resistor made one of the best sounds a guitar could possibly make. This is not opinion, this is a fact. A Fuzz Face! Now i look at the engineering behind the sounds of these products, (Fender Blender, ect), and ask myself why is it that these products sound like ****? With double the components and less sound capabuilities these days i wounder if your just getting screwed by who ever is producing this ****. Im sorry but test your **** before you go bankrupt, I know kids these days dont know what a good sound is, however it would be nice if someone could actually bring back the definition of sound!!! Its simple, find a man named jamie Ward in New York, geneva area, and ask him about a man named jim bracket. THis man will bring back your sound and keep your business going.

My setup runs as such: Maple neck Fender Stratocaster -> Boss OC-2 Octave -> Fender Blender -> Boss DS-1 -> Ampeg Scrambler (octave effect on this one all the way OFF) -> 50 watt tube Crate 2x12 combo. The Blender sits in front of all the other dirtboxes because i'm using it more for the octave effect/ring modulation insanity than for the fuzz, which is kind of a waste considering how much gain this pedal has. Honestly, I like the Scrambler's octave sound a little better, but that pedal doesn't have a gain knob, and this one doesn't have any way to turn off the octave effect. So i use the Scrambler solely for the fuzz (which it does amazingly well, but that's for a different review) and the Blender solely for octave. I play in a 3 piece band with a bass player whose life goal is to be as loud and distorted as humanly possible, so finding the right frequencies to fill and be heard is extremely important. As such, I really can't use this pedal all the time. It tends to take away some of the upper mids which are so crucial to being heard over my bassist's behemoth wall of fuzz, so i don't usually switch it on unless i'm playing way high on the neck where i'll be getting all kinds of high frequencies that will sit on top of the mix. Turning on either the Scrambler or the DS-1 helps fill in the frequencies a little bit. When the Boss OC-2 is switched on, the Blender emphasizes the lower octaves surprisingly well, so I often use the two of them together to get some really sick four-octave-thick sounds. My bassist feels jealous and inadequate. I am using a reissue model, so the bypass switching sounds fine. Whether it's true bypass or not, i don't know. Don't really care. And the Tone Boost is a joke, when it's off the output is essentially halved. I just leave it on all the time, and roll the tone knob down a bit to compensate.

I haven't had this thing long enough to break it, but I would probably be hard-pressed to do so. The casing is thick as a brick.

I'm still working on getting the right sound out of this monster; I've only had it for a month now. I recommended it to the bassist in my band, who was previously using my Boss HM-3, and looking for something sicker. He hated the octave sound, so i stuck it in my chain and couldn't make myself give it up. The four knobs are pretty self-explanatory, I turned the volume and blend all the way up and the sustain all the way down right from the get-go. But finding the perfect balance with the tone knob is still taking a little bit of work. But WHY IS THERE NO LED? Very frustrating.

See above.

A very unique sound that few people can really appreciate. I really wish it had an LED to tell whether it be on or not, because having 3 distortion pedals running simultaneously makes it difficult to tell in a live setting how many of them are on. And it would be nice to have a knob to effectively roll off the octave sound without changing any other aspects of the tone. The Blend knob is nice, but it's essentially useless. As are the Volume, and the Tone Boost. Which makes 3 out of 5 controls on this pedal purely decorative... Well, I'm sure other people know how to use them. But they don't really do much except compromise your rig's output.

It sounds so amazing on my bass. I was using a pignose detonator and/or a big muff PI but then I discovered the Fender Blender. You turn it on and you end up wanting to just hit a note and just listen to it goi9ng,"wow...it's so good!"

it works well.

I just put every knob on 10

I don't know.

I play raw nasty rock with a bit of punk and a bit of country mixed in. I am hooked on fuzz bass. THis petal makes my yamaha bb450 and my crappy  little amp sound like a jet engine.