I always wonder why more distortion boxes don’t have a built in crossover specifically for this reason. I prefer fuzz myself, and the Swollen Pickle adds low end plus you can sort of mix your dry/effected signal.
My thoughts exactly! I'd absolutely love a distortion unit for only the Mid-High end. Really surprised no one has does this yet considering how often its done in a mixing scenario.
Brimstone audio crossover distortion
Iron Ether Divaricator
EBS Multidrive
There may be others, but there are at least these 3 that fit your description. I agree there should be more.
I found that trying to crossover the distortion using an IE Divaricator was not as easy as I anticipated, and the tone was not what I expected nor wanted. When you crossover the clean lows, you aren't sending them to the clipping section, which changes the gain of the signal your are trying to clip, and the resulting tone can be quite different from the clipped tone of a full range signal. I think better results would come from having a gradual slope roll-off on the clean highs *after* the signal sent to the distortion channel. In fact, I'd want a bit of cut in the lows running into the clipping section (because that is what I like) but not a fully crossed over signal with a steep 4-pole slope. In studio mixing, there is generally a split of the signal and a full range clean tone and a full range distorted tone *driven* by the full range clean tone are mixed and layered. With a pedal using a crossover, the tones for blending are set before the distortion gets the full clean signal.
Ideally, I'd want an impossible *dynamic* crossover (with a gradual slope) where the lowest X% of the signal is kept clean. The issue I see with available real world crossovers, IMHO, is the fixed frequency cutoff point. For example, imagine setting the crossover at 100 Hz, You'd get the fundamental on all notes up to the G# (104 Hz) on a standard tuned bass G string (first fret). Higher than that, and you get no benefit from the crossover, as the fundamental is above the crossover, so the signal would be fully distorted, making the crossover pointless, though a clean fundamental seems less meaningful on those strings/notes. You'd also get the clean first overtone up to the G#/Ab on the E string, since the A above it is 55 Hz. So for some of your fret board, you are getting a clean fundamental and some of it you are getting a fundamental and a first overtone. I just picked 100 Hz as an example. Move it up or down and you still have the issue of some notes getting a clean fundamental, some getting additional overtones in the clean channel, and some notes bypassing the clean channel. I think this creates tone inconsistencies in how the notes present.
I think this is why more builders don't include a crossover blend; because there are too many ways to skin this cat, and many of them can be tricky and lead less sophisticated users to bad results.
I do want to try the COG 66 Mini, and their implementation of the clean blend, which rolls off the high end from the blended clean signal.
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