Clean booster vs passive attenuator

[Zbysek]

Short story:
Do you have an experience with using passive attenuator instead of clean boost?

Long story:
I am re-arranging my pedalboard and plan to do the following: my overdrive (Nobels odr) will be placed in a crossover splitter/blender (Broughton FFXL).

The crossover will be set so that frequencies below 500Hz will remain clean and frequencies above 500Hz will be sent to the overdrive.

I want to be able use two levels of overdrive for my mids and highs. I have two options: either place a clean booster in the crossover loop before the drive, or place a passive attenuator at the same spot. I plan to do the latter.

There are two reasons:
1. I am afraid that active device-such as clean booster-might mess with the phase/polarity
2. Passive device will not occuppy additional port on my MXR ISO brick

Any comments?

 

[GrowlerBox]

I have no direct experience with this particular setup, but for what it's worth, I do have a preference for passive devices where these are feasible, which is clearly not everywhere. That said, does the crossover not have a phase control? If not, I imagine there's a clean boost available that does, and possibly also with a pad that would allow more flexibility with respect to cutting and augmenting the signal.

 

[Zbysek]

does the crossover not have a phase control?

It does…but I don’t want to risk a situation where I would need the switch in one position for both pedals on and in another position for one pedal on and one pedal off.

my (uneducated) assumption is that passive device is less likely to mess with polarity/phase than active device…