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skullservant wrote:Trails are hard to do cheaply! It sucks that something that seems simple is that hard from an electronic standpoint. I've tried thinking of a cheap solution for trails in my own builds and it's just a lot of work.
So since there are so many pedals out there without trails that won't work for me, I think about this a lot too; albeit from a much less knowledgeable perspective than you dudes. Why couldn't you built what is essentially a simple passive A/B switch in front of the circuit to get trails? That way the stomp essentially dictates whether you're feeding the pedal or not -- when you stomp to turn it on your signal goes through the circuit, and when you stomp to turn it off you get trails because the output from the reverb (in this case) continues to come out along with your clean (and true bypass!) signal for as long as knob (feedback, release, etc) settings dictate.
I drew a quick diagram:
Best of both worlds? Am I explaining myself clearly? There has to be something I'm missing because this seems too easy.
So what you mean is basically have both connected to the output, but decide where the input signal goes?
In theory, I get what you mean and it should technically work. But whether or not that's achievable using a 3PDT or similar I'm not sure. Plus, if you have the circuit always connected to the output, any noise or colouring (however slight) the circuit makes on it's own could still affect the outputted signal. I'm not entirely up on my tech knowledge, but I'm fairly certain that different circuits may respond to having an output, but no input.
Simply put, I'm not sure it would actually end up as true bypass.
not gonna lie, i like buffered pedals. stuff like dirt and modulation may as well be true bypass but it can be really beneficial having a couple of buffered pedals in the chain so they may as well be delay and reverb.
if this is an actual solution i'm interested though.
Yeah I drew up some stuff as well. I'm gonna try it out soon with some spare parts to see if we can get some trails going. I dont think you can get true bypass with trails, but the diagram that I made was essentially this:
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You have your input from the jack going to pin 4 You have your effect send going to pin 3 Pin 9 goes to output jack with buffer Effect return (from board) goes also to output jack
So essentially your input signal is being confronted with two options- either going to the output jack with a buffer, or to the effect, through the effect, and to the same output jack
I don't really care about true bypass either way (except I think it's over-hyped nonsense that you need a full board of it) but the idea was my simple solution for a box that would allow me to add trails to a pedal without them. Ideally this could be a simple switch wiring mod that could be done to any pedal. Again -- I don't really know what I'm doing/talking about electronically so I'm not sure if it would work in the reals. I just wanted to share due to all the hubbub in the Afterneath thread.
skullservant wrote:Yeah I drew up some stuff as well. I'm gonna try it out soon with some spare parts to see if we can get some trails going. I dont think you can get true bypass with trails, but the diagram that I made was essentially this:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
You have your input from the jack going to pin 4 You have your effect send going to pin 3 Pin 9 goes to output jack with buffer Effect return (from board) goes also to output jack
So essentially your input signal is being confronted with two options- either going to the output jack with a buffer, or to the effect, through the effect, and to the same output jack
Awesome, Skully! Looking forward to hearing your results. Q: why would the signal need a buffer to go directly from in to out? Isn't that what TB is?
I dont know that it would necessarily NEED a buffer, but my thought was if you have unaffected signal fighting with effected signal for a few seconds, the unaffected signal would probably benefit from a buffer for that extra 'push' while something like a delay or reverb rings out
Worked perfect! I only had an active A/B to test, but I don't see why it wouldn't work passive as you said. Seems like it should be pretty simple to add trails to any pedal with basically no cost other than a switch (and buffer as desired) and wiring time.
So why don't pedal companies offer TB and trails??
I think this will work as long as there is a buffered signal going into the pedal (low impedance). If the guitar is plugged directly in then the output of the effect will load down the guitar signal and could cause lots of tone loss.
Also if the delay pedal adds any kind of noise to the signal then that will always be present.
You got to balance the output impedances if the two 'routes'. They may be very different and you need to sum them through a summing amplifier. If you don't and one side is true bypass, then the performance of the effect will alter depending on what you got plugged into the input.
i've read all of these on various places: - in the beginning right after the input jack? - on the dry bypassed signal on its way to the output jack? - mix both signals then into buffer? - on the fx output from the pcb on its way to the output jack?
