do i need a great buffer i.e. Pete Cornish.......

mgaw

Hi   i have an Anderson Hollow T with Lollar Charlie Christian pick ups....into a Kingsley Page - BJFE model G custom shop-BigFoot magnavibe- free the tone chrono delay- all into a Carr slant 6v.....which not unsuprisingly all sounds great...but as is the way of things could it be improved with a line driver and buffer? any thoughts please

Dave_Mc

Get an EHX soul food or a visual sound pure tone buffer (£30-£40 each) and see. You don't need to spend crazy money to see if a buffer will help. If all those pedals are true bypass a decent buffer will likely help, but that's no guarantee that you'll prefer how you sound with one...

mgaw

thanks i did wonder how much went into making a good buffer, primary concern for me is retaining the tone i have currently....it doesnt have to be totally transparent but add something musically pleasing

ThePrettyDamned

Are none of those pedals buffered? You only really need one in the chain if it's that short to notice an improvement.

The visual sound buffer is great. A regular boss tuner is also great (I think Pete Thorn did a video that demonstrated how little difference there was between buffers but showed the massive improvement compared to a long chain of crap bypass pedals).

mgaw

cool i will check and see if there is a buffered one in there     thanks glad i checked before splashing out the cash

thermionic

Buffers are very simple circuits - a single transistor or an opamp with a gain of 1. Not sure how a £200 buffer can be that much better than one costing a tenth of that price.

Dave_Mc

^ Yeah. It's worth being a little picky about buffers, at least until you decide if you like them or not (you don't want to end up thinking you hate buffers when maybe you've only tried mediocre ones), since a lot of the mass-produced, popular pedals have mediocre buffers in them which aren't quite unity gain (or which otherwise adversely affect your tone), but that doesn't mean you have to spend tons, either. The visual sound buffer is slightly above unity gain I think, while the soul food buffer (klon buffer) is very nice indeed, and neither is super-expensive.

ThePrettyDamned said:

Are none of those pedals buffered? You only really need one in the chain if it's that short to notice an improvement.

The visual sound buffer is great. A regular boss tuner is also great (I think Pete Thorn did a video that demonstrated how little difference there was between buffers but showed the massive improvement compared to a long chain of crap bypass pedals).

I think i prefer the klon/soul food one ) The visual sound one is pretty good, but it's a bit too obvious that there's a buffer there, if you know what I mean- it overcompensates which results in a slight perceived thinning of your tone (to my ears), whereas the soul food just sounds like you've plugged straight in to the amp. On the other hand, for that same reason, I could see some people thinking the soul food buffer is too subtle )

And yeah good point, check that none of those pedals are already buffere before spending any money.

mgaw

I like the idea of subtle i.e. soulfood.

Dave_Mc

bear in mind that's just to my ears and with my rig. you may hear it completely differently )

also the soul food has a little switch inside to swap between buffered and true bypass, so you need to make sure it's set to buffered.

mgaw

thanks it sounds like a good plce to start.

EdGrip

The SHO is another much-admire'd buffer, though one I found to be a tad bright. Again, it's only a cheap BS170 transistor, 5 resistors, a couple of caps and a diode. A buffer is a very simple thing.

Cornish's buffer is a well-documented circuit too, and I'd urge anyone thinking of buying anything of his to do some non-TGP reading and think very carefully before they do. And then don't.

Sassafras

As above, the SHO works very well as a buffer as long as it's switched on. I think most boosters will act as buffers if set to unity gain. Recently I bought a VHT Valvulator which doesn't seem too popular but I think it's the ultimate buffer and enhancer, also seems to cut single coil hum.

ICBM

You may be over-thinking it. If you've got four true bypass pedals and your total length of (good quality) cable is about thirty feet or under it's unlikely you will notice any difference - at least not with a good buffer that doesn't colour the sound at all.

I would do as already said - get a useful other pedal which has a good buffer in it and see whether it makes any difference. If it doesn't, you still have a useful other pedal.

mgaw

ICBM said:

You may be over-thinking it. If you've got four true bypass pedals and your total length of (good quality) cable is about thirty feet or under it's unlikely you will notice any difference - at least not with a good buffer that doesn't colour the sound at all.

I would do as already said - get a useful other pedal which has a good buffer in it and see whether it makes any difference. If it doesn't, you still have a useful other pedal.

mgaw

/\  thanks for that i need a tuner so will look into one of them      

ThePrettyDamned

mgaw;668228" said:

/\  thanks for that i need a tuner so will look into one of them      

A boss tu-2 or tu-3 would do it nicely, the only issue with some boss buffers is having loads of them as they cumulatively seem to reduce the volume of the signal. That said, I run 3 in a row on my board and do not notice any difference between that and plugging straight in, so maybe you need several.

xmrchi

I have never really been into pedals, so I need to ask the ultimate noob question (after 20 years of playing) what the hells a bugger do?

Edit: god dam autocorrect... But I'm leaving it coz it's funny.

ICBM

ThePrettyDamned said:

A boss tu-2 or tu-3 would do it nicely, the only issue with some boss buffers is having loads of them as they cumulatively seem to reduce the volume of the signal. That said, I run 3 in a row on my board and do not notice any difference between that and plugging straight in, so maybe you need several.

From what I've read elsewhere the buffer in the TU-3 is noticeably better than the TU-2, although I haven't directly compared them. The TU-3 is a better tuner too, so it's worth getting one rather than a cheap second hand TU-2 if you have the choice.

I like the TU-2 and I see no need to replace mine, though.

The limit with Boss pedals seems to be about four or five - more than that and you definitely notice a loss of volume and tone. I don't hear it with three either.

mrchi said:

I have never really been into pedals, so I need to ask the ultimate noob question (after 20 years of playing) what the hells a bugger do?

Edit: god dam autocorrect... But I'm leaving it coz it's funny.

Buffery, of course.

Basically it reproduces the signal 'actively' - ie with a source of power, like an amplifier which doesn't actually "amplify" or increase volume - so it becomes immune to the tone-sucking effects of cable loading, pedal input impedance etc which will degrade the sound of an electric guitar signal. Ideally, it should do nothing except reproduce the signal it receives perfectly without altering it in any way.

In practice, that doesn't always work the best since we're actually used to hearing the sound of a very slightly degraded signal any time we use a standard long-ish cable and plug into a valve amplifier, which have a couple of electrical characteristics which subtly modify the sound. So the 'best sounding' buffers actually emulate those things as well, eg the Pete Cornish one and I presume the one in the Klon, which I've never tried but is supposed to sound very nice.

timhulio

Prevents treble loss caused by long cables.

xmrchi

Thanks guys, consider me schooled.

EdGrip

If you want to look behind the curtain of the Cornish Buffer (and the pedals he makes), Fred Briggs' site has a blog entry to help you do that (and one for almost any other pedal you care to name).

http://revolutiondeux.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/pete-cornish-ld-1-buffer.html?m=1