Sound Sculpture
Switchblade 16
Product Review

Reprinted in it's entirety by permission from Guitar Shop Magazine, February 1995

Written by Buck Dharma

Here's a niche product that not every player may need, but probably everyone with a complex guitar setup would want. When players accumulate more than a chain of stomp boxes, they're faced with the problem of how to connect all the different guitar amps, preamps, rack effects, wah-wahs, vintage stomp boxes, and other electrical ingredients they've found to get the true tone in a usable fashion. Some of the more well-heeled among us seek the services of a Bob Bradshaw or a Pete Cornish for a customized switching and routing setup. The Sound Sculpture Switchblade 16 is a D.I.Y. alternative.

It's a one-rack space, AC powered (Hallelujah!) device with a substantial and unfortunately heavy metal case with 16 pairs of 1/4" phone audio ins and outs, four jacks for controlling on/off or channel-switching footswitches on your gear, a footswitch jack for itself, and MIDI in and out on the back panel and a two-row backlit LCD, three LEDs and four interface buttons on the front. The idea is to patch everything-your guitar or wireless, any preamps, any effects, any floor boxes, any amps and power amps/cabs (if you use more than one)-into the Switchblade, and it will do all the routing, volume setting, and MIDI program and footswitch changing for your entire gear inventory, allowing you to completely rewire and reset levels for your setup every time you step on one footswitch, should you so wish. Now that's flexibility.

For example, you could go from your two 4x12", MESA tube-power amps, three preamps (two in parallel and one in series with the others), several multi-effects processors (fed signal from different points in the chain and returning at all different pans and volumes) sound called "MEGA-Shred Deathstack," to just your guitar into a Big Muff and a Princeton Reverb with one stab of your boot toe. And back. Yow. Plus, there are two MIDI continuous controller faders that will sweep the volumes of any devices you choose. Cross-fade from Deathstack to Princeton. Princestack. Deathston. Whoa, I'm getting dizzy with all the possibilities.

Now on to programming. After plugging all your gear into the ins and outs, name each device-connection in the setup menu. Now you can create patches that refer to gear rather than numbers. Anything plugged into the Switchblade may be routed however your want. Each Switchblade preset is a complete configuration, with static connections and volumes and dynamic, sweepable connections between plugged-in gear. You decide where the signal goes, from which device in to which device out, at what gain, (unity, louder or softer), series or parallel, whatever, and where you want it all to come out. Input 1 offers a special clean gain stage for bringing a guitar or mic up to line level before entering the Switchblade circuitry. Add program change commands for your MIDI stuff and channel switching/reverb/tremolo footswitch command for your amp heads and you're done. Next preset.

Your can call your presets with a MIDI program change, or use the Switchblade's preset manager, a 20-bank memory, each bank holding up to 10 of your favorite patches. A single momentary footswitch will cycle through up to 10 of your patches, the second switch will cycle through up to 20 of your banks. Each bank may contain from two to 10 patches, and the switches cycle only the banks you've entered and only the patches you've entered for each bank. The internal memory may be dumped to or loaded from a MIDI sequencer for storage. Interface difficulty: No particle physics experience required, but decent reading comprehension and clear thinking are recommended. You'll need the manual.

How does it sound? Great. This box lets you add or remove gear from the chain at will. Whatever sound you're looking for, you need never go through unwanted gear in the Bypass mode. The Switchblade goes far beyond effects loop switchers, letting you patch things in ways impossible with cords. The signal path is always the shortest necessary to do the job. The audio quality is bolt clean with tons of headroom. Overload indication for every device patch is available during preset programming. Connections made through the Switchblade sound as good as using a cord (with gain, if you want). The drag is, it's expensive. Cheap by custom-rack switching setup standards, it's still a pro piece at a pro price. However, if you insist on having all your favorite gear available in any combination on stage and you want the capability to "morph" between different sounds, all with the highest fidelity, the Switchblade 16 is probably it.