Sometimes utility pedals can open the door to interesting and creative ideas. The Great Eastern FX XO Variable Crossover might be such a device, with its ability to split the signal into a high and low-frequency band and send each out to a separate loop chain, allowing you to use different effects for each, and then blend them back together or send them to different amps.
This application can be extremely useful for both guitar and bass players (the pedal is optimized to work with both), allowing the latter in particular to apply effects to the midrange frequencies without affecting the bottom-end.
The Crossover Freq knob selects the range where the frequency split happens, routing the high frequencies to the right output and the lower ones to the left one – although you can reverse that through the Send switch. The Range switch changes the frequency range of this control: 50Hz to 600Hz when pressed down, and 300 Hz to 3.4kHz when released.
The smaller Return Balance knob adjusts the blend of the two returning signals. When nothing is plugged in, the send and return jacks are linked and the Return Balance acts as a tilt EQ.
A Phase switch allows to reverse the phase of the low band, which can “fix” things when the resulting tone sounds thin, but will also produce a more hollow tone, canceling the crossover frequencies.
There’s also a Dry Blend knob that lets you reintegrate the original signal under the blended one, for more subtle and dynamic results, depending on the effects used.
