Morley FXB FX Blender

This is an odd but useful pedal. It creates a parallel FX loop, where the treadle controls the amount of FX blended with the dry signal. That's all it does. There's an FX send level control and four jacks (in, out, send, return). It'll run on a 9V battery or a standard Boss-style wall-wart.

The pedal has no sound per se. What's important is how well the treadle controls the blend. That's where the pedal - as received - fell down on the job. Most of the change in mix took place in the last 20% of the pedal travel.

Fortunately, this is a simple pedal. It has a couple of buffer amps and three LDRs that get a variable amount of light through a shutter attached to the pedal. A quick look at the schematic (available online: kudos to Morley for this) made it easy to figure out the function of each of the LDRs. I was able to slightly reposition the LEDs to improve how the treadle improved the blend.

Normally I wouldn't have bothered fixing a brand new pedal on my own. It either works or it goes back to the seller. But this pedal is apparently being discontinued. I bought it for a close-out price, any return shipping would have negated the savings, and - as I mentioned above - it's really easy to fix.

This is supposed to pass through the signals - dry and effects - without coloration. It does.

Now that it's properly set up, I don't expect any more problems. The construction seems solid, both inside and out. Of course, time is the real test.

I've never had any cause to deal directly with Morley.

I play a mix of folk, jazz and psychedelic music. I bought the FXB to help me blend electronic sounds with the clean sound of the guitar for an experimental project.

I'm using a Sonuus G2M monophonic guitar-to-MIDI converter into a Roland SH-32 synth. The FXB controls the blend of the clean guitar sound to the synth sound.

I first picked up the guitar sometime around 1967. I got serious about the instrument in 1999 following a 20-year layoff.

I play a couple of custom-build Koll guitars through one of several clean amps.

I don't think I'd replace this pedal. It's part of an experimental rig that's not part of my primary style.

As far as I know, there's no other pedal that functions like the FXB. The closest I could get would be to pair a stereo pan pedal with a separate mixer; that'd cost a lot more and take more space.

Power to the pedal is switched on when a plug is inserted into the FX send jack. I think it would have been more useful to switch the power using the FX return jack, which would let the pedal more easily double as a volume pedal. (As is, you can use the FXB as a volume pedal by plugging an instrument into the FX return jack and a short cable - nothing on the other end - into the FX send jack in order to turn on the power.)