Bypass v buffer switch

harpo · September 2014

what exactly does this do inside the soul food and does it affect the pedals that come after it?

Dave_Mc · September 2014

it lets you decide whether the pedal is true bypass or buffered.

what pedals do you have in the rest of your chain?

harpo · September 2014

Was hoping for an explanation of what each setting does ffs! I have an eq, an env filter, and a delay after it

timhulio · September 2014

You might find the envelope filter behaves slightly differently and you might need to change the threshold setting. Otherwise buffered vs true bypass shouldn't make too much difference in this context.

crunchman · September 2014

If you have a long chain of pedals it's good to have a buffer early in the chain. With a small number it shouldn't make much difference. Try it both ways and see if you can hear a difference.

Dave_Mc · September 2014

harpo said:

Was hoping for an explanation of what each setting does ffs! I have an eq, an env filter, and a delay after it

I know that, but we sort of need more information to help.

(Sorry if it sounded like I was being sarcastic, I genuinely wasn't

) If you can tell us what the actual specific pedals are (i.e. brand and pedal type) then that'll help us to make an educated guess as to how much difference the buffer will make- because your current pedals might already have buffers in them, and in that case the buffer in the soul food will most likely make much less difference.

As a very rough explanation, true bypass is just the input of your pedal connected straight to the output with a wire (when it's bypassed)- both the input and output of the effect are disconnected, and it's as if you're just using a cable (of the total length of both the cable going into the pedal and going out of the pedal to your amp) between your guitar and amp.

This is good in one way because it means you don't have half-assed bypass (where only the effect's output is disconnected, and which can lead to "tone suck" in bypass if the effect's input impedance is too low), and it also means you don't have a crap buffer (which might not be quite unity gain, or which might not be tonally transparent) which will also adversely affect your tone.

The problem with true bypass though is that it's doing nothing to help your guitar signal- so longer cable lengths and/or lower quality/high capacitance cable will start to rob your tone of high end.

In which case you want a (good- i.e. unity gain (not a drop in volume) and tonally transparent) buffer which will bring back in your high end.

But if you already have buffered pedals in your chain another buffer will likely not do very much since your signal is already being buffered.

(EDIT: I'm actually not sure if it will affect the workings of the pedals afterwards. I'd have thought not, in most cases, but I could be wrong. Vintage-style fuzzes like Fuzz Faces are known to not like buffers in front of them, though. There may be other effects types which don't like it too, I'm not sure.)

crunchman said:

If you have a long chain of pedals it's good to have a buffer early in the chain. With a small number it shouldn't make much difference. Try it both ways and see if you can hear a difference.

Yeah that's pretty much the simple answer right there.

ICBM · September 2014

^ I'm not going to say anything because that sums up pretty much everything I've ever said about true bypass and buffers, in a much more concise way.

The only thing I would add is that if you have an envelope filter, you probably want it in front of the overdrive instead of after - unless you've already tried that and prefer it where it is.

Dave_Mc · September 2014

That's probably not a coincidence because I probably copied most of it from you

)

EDIT: Just out of interest... will a good buffer compensate for a bad one? You know the way, for example, you can use a buffer to sort of counteract the tone-suck of half-assed bypass?

ICBM · September 2014

No… the problem with a bad buffer is that you can't really fix it with anything, before or after. It's different from 'tone suck' in that respect and is the one real reason why *not* buffering pedals might be better, if you can't do it well.

The Boss-type 'not quite unity gain' isn't so bad as some though, you can compensate for that by adding a level boost, but it's a bit of a faff usually.

Dave_Mc · September 2014

ICBM said:

(a) No… the problem with a bad buffer is that you can't really fix it with anything, before or after. It's different from 'tone suck' in that respect and is the one real reason why *not* buffering pedals might be better, if you can't do it well.

(b) The Boss-type 'not quite unity gain' isn't so bad as some though, you can compensate for that by adding a level boost, but it's a bit of a faff usually.

(a) Yeah that's sort of what I was scared of

)

(b) Yeah that's a good point.

Thanks

harpo · September 2014

Ok, so if I understand correctly ....true bypass is like not having a pedal there, but what is buffered??

Dave_Mc · September 2014

Yep, exactly, true bypass is like not having the pedal there (but you have the two lengths of cable there- whereas if you had no pedal you'd only have the one length of cable).

Buffered (in theory, anyway) is sort of like having a tonally transparent clean boost on set to unity gain (i.e. no volume boost or cut). ICBM can explain this better than me. Basically, again in theory, a good buffer should stop tone suck from long cables i.e. should bring the top end/sparkle back into your tone.

EDIT: The real way to see is to do a bunch of A/B comparisons. Granted, EHX doesn't make it easy since you have to remove the back plate. But you don't have to rescrew it in when you're doing the comparisons (that's what I did, I just set the backplate back on so I could swap between the two as quickly as possible).

ICBM · September 2014

harpo said:

Ok, so if I understand correctly ....true bypass is like not having a pedal there, but what is buffered??

If it's done really well, it's like going straight into the amp at that point.

The big problem with true bypass (apart from switch noise and unreliability) is that when it's bypassed, the *following* cables and any other pedals are then driven by the guitar as well - which can mean effectively more than doubling the length of the cable - and will suck tone.

A really good buffer - like the one Pete Cornish uses - mimics the input characteristics of a valve amp, and is immune to any following loading, so the sound you get is the same as plugging straight into the amp with the first cable.

Dave_Mc · September 2014

^ Oh yeah absolutely.

I was just meaning more in sort of "real world" terms. And also if you compare it to the entire length of cable in your true bypass pedal chain, the sort of brightening you get sort of feels a little bit like you've turned on a (transparent) pedal set to unity gain.

I tried my soul food (set to buffer) next to one cable straight into the amp, and as you said, it sounded more or less the same as that. Maybe marginally better.

ecc83 · September 2014

The term "buffer" for an electronic device is in some ways similar to our use of the term in mechanics, a buffer absorbs impact and helps to prevent it being passed on.

A "perfect" electronic buffer would,

1) Not load the source signal i.e. have a very high input impedance.

2)Not allow changes in the loading circuit to influence the source.

3)Not change the source signal in any way except increase its power level i.e. its ability to drive low Z loads.

Any modern op amp IC used with 100% negative feedback can do this (or even a 30yr old one like the NE5532!) and it is hard to see how anyone could ***k that up!

Dave.

ICBM · September 2014

ecc83 said:

The term "buffer" for an electronic device is in some ways similar to our use of the term in mechanics, a buffer absorbs impact and helps to prevent it being passed on.
A "perfect" electronic buffer would,
1) Not load the source signal i.e. have a very high input impedance.
2)Not allow changes in the loading circuit to influence the source.
3)Not change the source signal in any way except increase its power level i.e. its ability to drive low Z loads.
Any modern op amp IC used with 100% negative feedback can do this (or even a 30yr old one like the NE5532!) and it is hard to see how anyone could ***k that up!

The problem tends to be that many/most use single-transistor emitter-followers instead, which (as you certainly know! But for everyone else…) have a gain of very slightly less than unity. The level loss is small, and by itself not noticeable, but if you string a few of them together in series, does become audible - but due to a quirk of psycho-acoustics, you hear it as more of a 'tone loss' (mostly of treble) than a volume loss, even though it is actually almost always just volume. Some also may have slightly undersized coupling caps and can rob a little bit of bottom-end too.

Both these things are easily fixed, but cost slightly more than the way Boss & Co have been doing it for the last thirty years, and presumably why they haven't been changed. Boss developed their switching as a good solution to the very real problems of mechanical switching - which still haven't gone away - but the small flaws in their system are now used as a stick to beat them with by true-bypass proponents… even though the right solution is to fix the buffering, not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

I have a friend who won't use a Boss pedal because when the battery dies it won't work in bypass though, so I suppose you can't always reason with people who have always done things the old way!

Dave_Mc · September 2014

ICBM said:

The problem tends to be that many/most use single-transistor emitter-followers instead, which (as you certainly know! But for everyone else…) have a gain of very slightly less than unity. The level loss is small, and by itself not noticeable, but if you string a few of them together in series, does become audible - but due to a quirk of psycho-acoustics, you hear it as more of a 'tone loss' (mostly of treble) than a volume loss, even though it is actually almost always just volume. Some also may have slightly undersized coupling caps and can rob a little bit of bottom-end too.

Both these things are easily fixed, but cost slightly more than the way Boss & Co have been doing it for the last thirty years, and presumably why they haven't been changed. Boss developed their switching as a good solution to the very real problems of mechanical switching - which still haven't gone away - but the small flaws in their system are now used as a stick to beat them with by true-bypass proponents… even though the right solution is to fix the buffering, not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

I agree 100%, but at the same time considering Boss is (I think) the single biggest pedal manufacturer (and by some margin, again I think), and considering how long they've had to fix it (I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt and assuming they're aware of it), is there any actual chance it's likely to be fixed in the real world?

)

I don't really blame people (especially those who can't fix it themselves) for coming up with a solution which treats a real world problem which the manufacturers really should be addressing themselves. (Granted, true bypass has its own problems.)

Also Boss isn't the only one, as you implied. The Digitech buffers I've tried aren't great either, and they're also one of the big guys, I'd say.

I mean- I'm 100% with you, I'd far rather use a good buffer than true bypass. But when my options, most of the time at least, are either true bypass or a bad buffer... it's a lot easier to fix (most of) the problems inherent with true bypass, as you said earlier in the thread.

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Bypass v buffer switch

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