[All_¥our_Bass]

Overall I like my current distortion sounds. But they all could use a little bit more definition by having more transients in the signal. (Transients are things like pick attack and string noise) I could do this this by turning down the gain, but it doesn't sound quite as awesome. The distortion looses it's 'thickness'.

So I thought a Clean/Dirty mix would be in order. Justin Chancellor (Tool Bassist) does this for his distortion, and it sounds awesome. Plus it would be neat to have automatic clean doubling if I decided to turn up the clean.

So my signal chain would be like this

Guitar ----> Splitter +----> Distortion Pedal --->Blend ----> Amp
                      |                           ^
                      |                           |
                      +------(Clean Signal)-------+

Any suggestions?

[dpm]

Gadzooks...this is something I've been playing with on and off for a while, except with preamps rather than pedals. I'm just putting some stuff together to get it happening properly. You need a splitter with a transformer isolated and buffered 2nd output. Not just isolated, it needs to be buffered as well to prevent the impedance of the your devices from interacting. You also need a phase reverse switch on the 2nd output as the distortion device may flip the phase of the signal.

I have a splitter which I built from schematics on the Jensen Transformers site. I made the passive version to start with and am in the middle of changing it to the active buffered version. The signals will be combined either by using the parallel loop inputs on my amp, or with a line mixer if that doesn't get the desired result.

Other options (that you can buy) are the Radial Switchbone, Lava Cable's Lava Flow, and the Voodoo Lab Amp Selector (but this one doesn't have phase switches). The you have to mix the signal somehow. The 'mix' control on a parallel loop can work, and there are line mixers from Behringer etc.

You won't be able to mix a passive guitar signal directly with a low impedance signal from a pedal. You'll need some kind preamp'd clean signal.

[All_¥our_Bass]

Why? What would happen if I didn't use a preamp?

Also my amp only has one input (cheap pratice amp, but sounds great) so any blending of the two signals would have to be in a pedal, same for splitting.

[dpm]

Come to think of it, you should be able to take the buffered output of a splitter as the clean signal and blend it with the output of a pedal. I can't seem to find any guitar level mixers just yet.

[dpm]

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[All_¥our_Bass]

Sweet!! But what about for splitting the signal in the first place?

Better start saving...

[dpm]

Dude, it does both. That is the only thing you need!

[All_¥our_Bass]

Oh okay. I couldn't really tell by looking at it or the description. Sorry.