Fishman AFX Pocket Blender Mini A/B/Y + DI Reviews
An A/B/Y splitter, DI box, 2-channel mixer, and clean booster all in one, the Fishman AFX Pocket Blender Mini packs a serious amount of utility into a bite-size box. Perfect for Fishman acoustic-electric guitar systems with an onboard mic and an under-saddle pickup, the AFX Pocket Blender splits your TRS cable’s tip and ring outputs into one of the four switchable A/B/Y combinations that you can instantly swap between using the footswitch. Even better, this pedal’s four level faders (two for each signal) on the input mixer make it a breeze to construct two vastly different presets comprised of your combined tip and ring signals. Lastly, this little pedal also comes equipped with several utility features, including a balanced DI output, A/B/Y output, and ground lift toggle to smooth over your setup when you’re onstage.
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Highest Rated Reviews
Simplified my gigs
Here was my challenge: My instruments are wired TRS, with the two pickups going through the separate channels. I like to perform with a Headrush Pedalboard and Gigboard, both of which take TS inputs. I had two gigs this weekend where I knew I (A) didn't want to spend time plugging and unplugging instruments, and (B) wanted to simplify my setup with a single pedalboard. Solution: I bought a 2xTRS to TRS Y cable, which kept both instruments plugged in and combined them into a single line. Then I plugged that into the Pocket Blender to mix them down to a TS signal, which went into my Pedalboard. Simple setup, simple breakdown, and sounded good in between.
Really cool
This line of pedals is a great concept that I have not seen before, and came just in time for me. I recently added a magnetic pickup and a TRS jack to one of my acoustic instruments that already had a piezo pickup, so that one pickup goes to the tip of the jack, and one goes to the ring. This pedal is a perfect (and tiny!) solution to switch/blend between the two pickups.
Well... almost perfect.
1) My main complaint is that the LED is the same color whether you are on the A or B mix. You can't tell which mix you are on by looking at it, unless I'm missing something. Dumb.
2) The outputs are thoughtful, but didn't quite do what I wanted to do. One is TRS out, with the A mix on the tip, and the B mix on the ring. If you are going to two amps, or another AFX pedal, that works perfectly!
But if your next pedal is mono, you have to sum the stereo signal to mono in order to hear both of the A/B mixes. There should be a button that does that. Or you can use the second output. It gives you a mono signal for both mixes, BUT it also has a non bypassable DI circuit for that output, and there is noticeable volume loss compared to the other output. If the next thing in line was the mixer that would work great.
In my case, I'm just using it as a stereo to mono switcher/blender, not to go between two amps, or signal chains, or as a DI (my DI with an effects loop comes next). I used the TRS output with a TRS sum to TS patch cable so I have both A and B going through the mono effects chain that comes next.
With a little help, it does exactly what I need it to do and more. It doesn't feel super tough, but it's also affordable which is always nice.
Flexable, Compact, and it gets the ABY job done
Basically, the Fishman AFX Pocket Blender Mini A/B/Y + DI does exactly what I needed to get accomplished. For my purposes, I use it at home for a A or A+B speaker arrangement. It will do a B only, but in my case the B speaker is just there to add some 'highs' to my overall sound. I can't speak for the DI output as I'm not using that at this time. However, I'd go with a more basic "simple and built like a tank" ABY pedal if I needed one for performing live. The good is that it's from a vendor I trust (Fishman), saves space, it's quiet, inexpensive, and works well. Now for the bad (to me), the Pocket Blender is an always on pedal (there is no on/off switch) and the LED is always lit up if it the pedal has power. Hence, the pedal is not a bypass pedal. I do get that that is the nature of the beast for this type of pedal, but I went ahead and put an external on/off switch pigtail on the 9 volt power adaptor, but that's just so I can turn off the LED when I'm not using that pedalboard. Enough about that. The only other things that I don't like are that the fonts are really tiny and hard to read so I pretty much need my glasses and/or ears and some decent light to see what is going on when changing the slide switch settings. My only other beef is that while the sliders feel firm and smooth when adjusting up or down, they fare on the wobbly side (side to side) and feel a bit cheesy. Time will tell if they hold up over the long term. I'd recommend the Pocket Blender if you are a home and/or studio user AND really need to save some space, else I'd recommend to look at some of the other offerings that are out there.
