Fender Blender

The Fender Blender is an octave fuzz pedal made by Fender, first released in 1968 and produced in its four-knob format until 1977¹. It was designed to be Fender's bells-and-whistles answer to the fuzz pedals that dominated the era, such as the Maestro Fuzz-Tone and the Fuzz Face¹. What set it apart was its Blend knob, which mixes the clean guitar signal back in with the fuzz, and its octave-up fuzz voice, partially inspired by the Octavia circuit¹.

Guitar World describes the original as "renowned for its uniquely vicious, dynamic octave fuzz"¹, and guitar.com's reviewer called it "the amazing Fender Blender octave fuzz of the late 60s"². The circuit lay dormant for decades until Fender brought it back in 2023 as a signature pedal built with Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine, a longtime user and fan of the original³.

The controls: volume, sustain, tone and blend

The original Blender's four knobs are Volume, Sustain, Tone and Blend, with the second footswitch engaging a treble boost⁴. MusicRadar confirms the same four controls on the fuzz circuit of the modern Shields Blender: Volume, Blend, Tone and Sustain⁵.

The Blend knob is the control that gives the pedal its name and its character. As MusicRadar puts it, you "simply adjust the Volume and Blend to set the balance between your guitar's signal and the fuzz"⁵. Premier Guitar's launch coverage describes the workflow: "Use the Volume and Blend knobs to set the right balance of clean and fuzz signals to create unique crisp tones, then use the Fuzz and Octave knobs to craft the mix of dual or triple octave fuzz"³.

That clean blend is what separates the Blender from most fuzz boxes of its era, which simply replaced your whole signal with fuzz. In guitar.com's review of the modern version, Richard Purvis found a practical use for it: "using the blend control can help to tame this effect" into an already distorted amp, and it "opens up the tonal palette"⁴.

An octave fuzz, not just a fuzz

The Blender is an octave fuzz rather than a plain fuzz. Guitar World notes it is "renowned for its uniquely vicious, dynamic octave fuzz, partially inspired by the Octavia circuit"¹. The modern Shields Blender version extends this with a sub-octave fuzz voice alongside the octave-up fuzz, and Delicious Audio describes its "new Octave Blender mode that sends the signal separately to the fuzz and the sub-octave fuzz"⁶. Gearnews characterizes the modern pedal as "based around two channels and three octaves of blendable, analog fuzz tones"⁷.

The two footswitchable channels of the modern version work like this, per Premier Guitar: "The Octave Footswitch toggles between two channels of fuzz. Channel One blends the fuzz voice with the original clean signal," while channel two blends fuzz with a monophonic sub-octave fuzz³.

Where the Blender came from

Fender has produced effects since its first volume pedal in 1954, from reverb units and tape delays to fuzz pedals and phasers⁸. The Blender arrived in 1968 as its flagship fuzz, and the original units ran until 1977 in the four-knob configuration¹⁵.

The pedal's modern history begins with Kevin Shields. Fender's press material describes the Shields Blender as "designed around Kevin Shield's original Fender Blender circuit, with his added tweaks," with channel one being "a hand-copied version of the original Blender circuit (of which Shields is a longtime user and fan)"³. In a guitar.com interview, Shields recalled that Fender "said that they were planning on re-releasing the Fender Blender anyway"⁹.

The timeline of the reissue:

MusicRadar notes the standard Kevin Shields Blender "is to join the brand's mainline range of pedals," and that the circuit, while based on the vintage unit, "is far evolved from vintage Blender units, and was four years in the making"¹⁰. Guitar.com reports the new Blender "echoes the tone of Shields' own vintage 1970s Fender Blender"¹¹. Shields himself has used it in the studio: "I've been using it a lot recently in the studio, it's been great"³.

How the modern version differs

Where the original had two footswitches, the Shields Blender has four: Bypass, Octave, Sag and Expand¹⁰. Guitar.com's review frames the change as "only with four footswitches instead of two"⁴, and the pedal carries eight knobs against the original's four⁵. The enclosure is an angled, brushed aluminum chassis with vinyl appointments³, and the standard model drops the Shields-signed backplate of the limited edition¹¹.

Guitar Pedal X summed up the lineage in its 2023 roundup: "Cool update of the 1968 Fender Blender with added controls and footswitches"⁴¹².

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