Volume pedal Tone Suck mod any good?

nickb_boy

I'm looking at getting an Ernie Ball VP Jr but have seen some reports about a noticeable change in tone for the worse when a tuner is used in the tuner out.  I've found one option to buy a new pedal in the US shipped to a company to get a their tone suck mod done including dual buffers (permanent on the tuner out and a switchable on the regular output) they even put in a nice LED light and a trim pot to add gain if wanted as a kind of boost, and then shipped back to me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=L2fjWOwscfQ

I wouldn't really be bothering if it wasn't for the fact that this still works out cheaper (including shipping) than if I brought one over here!!

Has anyone here got any experiences of this kind of mod or feels there is a need for it?

Appreciate any input on this. Cheers

ICBM

What tuner are you using?

It's probably much easier to use a non-tone-sucking tuner.

nickb_boy

I've got a polytune mini on the way as I needed a smaller footprint. I suppose I could have gone for one with a buffer and tried to squeeze it on. Although there are clips demonstrating the tone suck using just a lead plugged in to the tuner out without any tuner connected.

As the overall price will still be far better than buying a new one over here I think I'll give it a try. The only downside is I'll have to wait an extra week or two depending on delivery speed!

ICBM

If you're getting a Polytune, just turn the tuner on and off using the switch. The volume pedal tone suck thing really only applied when the only thing available were pre-pedal tuners like the Boss TU-12, and people needed to find a way of silent tuning while leaving it connected.

stickyfiddle

I ran one of those for years using the tuner out. Never noticed any issues at all. I'm sure there's a slight difference because some of the signal has to go to the tuner rather than the amp but it's not a big deal in the real world. Much better would be to buy one and see, then put a separate buffer before or after the tuner if you find it really bad. But it's honestly fine.

ICBM

stickyfiddle said:

I ran one of those for years using the tuner out. Never noticed any issues at all. I'm sure there's a slight difference because some of the signal has to go to the tuner rather than the amp but it's not a big deal in the real world. Much better would be to buy one and see, then put a separate buffer before or after the tuner if you find it really bad. But it's honestly fine.

It depends on the tuner. If you put a Boss TU-12 into the volume pedal and you don't have a buffered pedal before it, you will notice the tone suck - it's huge. (I'm fairly unbothered about a bit of tone suck normally too.)

crunchman

If you are getting a Polytune just put it in line and use the footswitch on the pedal rather than use the Tuner Out on the volume pedal.

octatonic

ICBM said:

What tuner are you using?

It's probably much easier to use a non-tone-sucking tuner.

This.

Put a decent tuner in line.

stickyfiddle

ICBM said:

stickyfiddle said:

I ran one of those for years using the tuner out. Never noticed any issues at all. I'm sure there's a slight difference because some of the signal has to go to the tuner rather than the amp but it's not a big deal in the real world. Much better would be to buy one and see, then put a separate buffer before or after the tuner if you find it really bad. But it's honestly fine.

It depends on the tuner. If you put a Boss TU-12 into the volume pedal and you don't have a buffered pedal before it, you will notice the tone suck - it's huge. (I'm fairly unbothered about a bit of tone suck normally too.)

Ah, in that case, get a good tuner! I used a Korg DT10 with mine. Excellent little thing.

ICBM

stickyfiddle said:

Ah, in that case, get a good tuner! I used a Korg DT10 with mine. Excellent little thing.

Yes, but you were only born in about 1985 so you wouldn't know about the days when the TU-12 was the only tuner you could get apart from big rack-type units .

stickyfiddle

1984 actually

But yeah, only had the DT10 and Polytune. I love the Polytune.

ICBM

stickyfiddle said:

1984 actually

The year I got my first guitar... and I was a late starter!

We don't know lucky we are nowadays with all the nice gear there is. The lash-ups people had to put up with in the past just to do something simple like silently tune on stage without unplugging the guitar are a surprisingly not that distant memory. I remember when the first Arion (they beat Boss to it) automatically muting pedal tuner came out. It was one of those "why didn't they think of that before" things...

ChrisMusic

Hey guys, can you clarify a piece of terminology for me, what do you mean by "tone suck"?

I assume it is about treble loss due to capacitative loading on the pickups, and also about other tonal changes due to resistive and inductive loadings?  I would love some clarification as I often see the term used.  - thanks

@ICBM said:    We don't know lucky we are nowadays with all the nice gear there is. The lash-ups people had to put up with in the past just to do something simple like silently tune on stage...

Not long before that there were no tuners (only a tuning fork etc), you had to sort your guitar so it was stable, and learn to retune fast or you were stuffed.    

ICBM

ChrisMusic said:

Hey guys, can you clarify a piece of terminology for me, what do you mean by "tone suck"?

I assume it is about treble loss due to capacitative loading on the pickups, and also about other tonal changes due to resistive and inductive loadings?  I would love some clarification as I often see the term used.  - thanks

Yes - loss of treble or volume (which if slight is perceived as a loss of tone rather than volume), almost all due to capacitive and resistive loading from cables and 'half-bypass' pedals, although occasionally caused by slightly-less-than-unity-gain buffers... which confuses people since buffers are supposed to *stop* tone suck!

ChrisMusic

Thanks for that @ICBM, a very good and succinct explanation, much appreciated.

I have to say it seems a mystery why there is all this aggro with pedals in the first place, a lot of it just seems down to lazy design or cost cutting, and the whole "true bypass" thing appears to be largely misunderstood, and is way more complicated in its consequences. As to 'half-bypass' and "non unity gain buffers", what on earth is all that about, seems ridiculous to me. Having said all that I have just returned to playing guitar again, and it's a pretty steep learning curve.

ICBM

'Half bypass' is the old way of mechanical switching, where they just used a single pole switch - because that's all that was available originally, or they were using a DPDT with the other half to switch the LED, 3PDTs are a fairly new development - and only switched the output of the effect circuit, leaving the input connected to the signal path. If the circuit input impedance is high enough, this doesn't matter, but it has to be *really* high for it to not be noticeable at all, especially if you have several pedals - the impedances are then effectively in parallel when the pedals are all off.

Non-unity-gain buffers are found in Boss and other pedals that use single-transistor emitter followers as the switches, and secondarily as a buffer. The gain is typically in the .9 range, so if you have just one you don't really notice the half-decibel volume drop. But if you have several in series it starts to add up - and at some point before where it really becomes audible as a volume drop, there is a psycho-acoustic effect where it sounds the same volume but with less good tone, which is a well-known effect. ("The louder sound always sounds better.")

It is perfectly possible to have unity-gain buffering which doesn't suffer from any of these issues, but it's very marginally more expensive to implement so the companies don't!

ChrisMusic

Another excellent explanation again, thanks @ICBM.