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what pedals do you have in the rest of your chain?
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.)
Yeah that's pretty much the simple answer right there.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
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?
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
(b) Yeah that's a good point.
Thanks
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).
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
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.
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.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
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.