Horrothia FX XYXO Parallel / Series Utility Mixer

For some pedalboards, you need the actual effects, of course, but also something a little bit more. This can come in the form of expression pedals, tap tempo buttons or, like today’s featured piece of gear, bigger signal routing capabilities. The XYXO Parallel / Series Utility Mixer from our friends at Horrothia FX offers up a wide assortment of ways to really dial in the sounds you have been searching for, whether it’s with effects, multiple amps and more. I had a lot of fun with this one, come along as we check it out!!

XYXO takes your instrument signal, buffers it (internal input gain trimmer) then splits it two ways. X and Y. A send and return to two pedals. Before the signal is sent, there’s a high pass and low pass filter (both are 12dB per octave Sallen-Key). There is a phase switch to flip phase 180 degrees and a send level control. Both X and Y pedals that are plugged in, can be run in series (X into Y), or X and Y in parallel. The signals returned from pedals X and Y each have a return level control and are then summed together, together with a dry blend control. There’s an overall high frequency EQ tone control, and then a master volume out. The phase switches in particular are incredibly powerful. These alone give you a 2 x 3 matrix of phase combinations. Both X and Y pedals can be phase flipped, and when combined with the straight dry signal, this gives you many possibilities.

Both X and Y pedals can be phase flipped, and when combined with the straight dry signal, this gives you many possibilities. XYXO has a Tails on/off function, which is found inside. This gives you two bypass modes; a relay true bypass plus a buffered bypass which combines the outputs of the X and Y pedals with the incoming instrument, allowing delay tails from the connected pedals to mix with the bypassed sound seamlessly. The many things that you can do with the XYXO. You can combine 2 overdrives in parallel. You can tweak the frequencies going to and from them. So it makes stacking overdrives lots of fun. You can turn a vibrato or any modulation effect into a chorus pedal using the Dry blend control. You can combine effects in ways that you’d never have thought to do before; like running 2 delays in parallel, with slightly different delay times. Parallel compression; send 2 different frequency bands to 2 different compression pedals. You can keep the low end dry and affect the top end with a bass guitar. You could use it as a splitter to 2 amps… You might want to use a bass amp for the low end of your signal and a guitar amp for the top end. You could dial all the low frequencies down to the bass amp and all the top to the guitar amp.

In the demo I made for the XYXO, I use the Spaceman Effects Atlas IV: Preamp Booster and the JHS / Electro-Harmonix Big Muff 2 Dual Op-Amp in the X and Y slots for the first part of the video. Then, for the 2nd section, I explore how the Mojo Hand FX Mister-O Phase Shifter and the Asheville Music Tools ADG-1 Analoger Delay work and play together. The XYXO Parallel / Series Utility Mixer opens up a ton of new sonic possibilities for you to explore, creating new sounds and shaping the tone of your favorite effects like never before. Thanks as always to Horrothia FX for sending this across the pod for me to check out – head to their website for more info, and grab a couple amazing pedals while you’re there!!