SONICAKE Active Signal Mixer, Analog Line Selector, as ABY and FX Loop, Guitar Effects Pedal with Three Channels - Portal

This has been one of my favorite additions to my pedal board. There is no extra noise added to the signal chain. It gives you a lot of functional tones with the A>B, B>A and parallel operation and a clean blend. It is a 9v center negative so your standard pedal board power supply works great. And for the money it does more than most of the higher end brands that cost 3 times as much.

This is the coolest thing I’ll put a spark amp on send A and a crazy synth pedal on send B and blend my dry till I find a sound unlike anything I’ve ever heard if you enjoy parallel, mixing, and want to feel that in your tone and live performance. Get this. Put your two favorite signal chains through it and blend A B and C to your liking. The only thing I will say is do not daisychain this pedal. It will gather some buzz. plug it straight in to power and treat it like it’s a micro mixing board and you will be very happy!

Originally, I used a splitter and a cheap mixer to run effects in parallel. Then I found this little gem, the Sonicake Portal. It has 3 loops, 2 are for running effetcs and the 3rd is a dedicated clean channel. You have stomp buttons, 1 for each channel to enable/disable the loop, and a volume control to mix the returns from the 3 loops. You can invert the phase for either or both of the A and B loops and you can decide if you want B to stack under A, or if you want them in parallel (which is how I use it). If all channels are off, the pedal operates in a true-bypass mode. If any channel is enabled, even the clear channel, the unit works as a buffer. If you've never run pedals in parallel, it's worth a try. Blending a boosted guitar sound along with a distorted signal is a nice sound. You can drive the distortion with the drive, but that's a different sound. Running a relatively clean guitar signal in parallel with a distorted bring a lot of clarity to the sound; chords don't get lost in the distortion cloud.

I bought this primarily to use as an ABY switcher so that I could send one guitar input out to a Line 6 Helix and an Apollo x6 audio interface. It sounds really clean when just running the guitar through the input and output and also when you kick in an effect loop. The problem is that when I try to use it as a 1-to-3 splitter using the output and sends, I get a lot of noise in the signal. I can do sends from my Helix to other devices without any noise and was hoping to get that same functionality from the Portal but it just doesn't work. I contacted the seller but there response was to have me send a video and not to tell me if this should work and how to set it up. Too bad as it looked like a pretty cool utility box but when just using sends, it's just too noisy.

It works as described. It's a nice feature set, and the signal quality is very good. There's a bit of boost available via the level knobs. The switches have both a loud physical click, and the enabling of any switch may cause a significant pop; which is problematic for switching in the middle of a piece. The buttons are positioned close together (which is understandable given the size of the unit)-- but it shouldn't be too difficult to hit the center button. The jacks on the back are plastic and not secured to the chassis in any way (which is typical of a budget device); so those connectors won't be as durable as panel mounted metal jacks. That should be ok if part of a fixed pedal board where they'll be connected and not jerked around very much. It's a versatile & useful pedal. The feature set is pretty unique, but unfortunately, the loud pop when switching reveals its budget nature.

I had no additional noise. I use a power conditioner, and I suggest you do to if your serious about your tone.

Great concept, poor execution. It works as intended until it doesn't. The signal keeps cutting out in both the "series" and "parallel" mode. It never even made it onto my pedalboard. Very disappointed in this product and would advise caution to those that are considering buying it.

This pedal is very versatile. Very useful. I can use it as a boost, I can mix 2 fx loops in series or parallel and the respective loops have adjustable out volume, also can mix in dry signal, and true bypass when all switches are off. I haven't even tinkered with out of phase feature. The footswitches are perfect proximity. I can toggle any single switch or all 3 at the same time. Perfect for my foot width. If your amp has an fx loop that's series only, this pedal can make it parallel. Really good pedal given the functionality and features.