efffing BUFFERS, dude?

[pigmaker]

i know this thread is boring, but i have a couple kind of important questions.

THEYRE IMPORTANT TO ME, DAMMIT!!!!!


1) what do u call a pedal that is improved by a buffer after it? i have a maestro fuzztone clone that changes in tone dramatically when i put the boss TU-2 chromatic tuner after it. way way more treble.

2) what do u call a pedal that isnt *either* true bypass *or* buffered bypass?


thanks yall, much appreciated.

[UnicornTrap]

FWIW I have an empress buffer+ on my board that's first (and last) in the chain. Its clean boost is real nice and has a separate jack for tuner out (so another mono signal to play with as well). I have a wah, tonebender, and big muff circuits after it with no problems. I was told a fuzzface might not play as well, but I don't have any around to try out.

[pigmaker]

so u have one at the start and one at the end?

right now i have an old dod comp at the front (buffer) and a boss tuner at the end.

might get a buffer/clean boost for the end at some point

[misterstomach]

ugh.

who cares.

i'm not a tone snob blues lawyer type really, but lots of people care. buffers are boring, but whatever. giving a shit about guitar tone is the reason most people are part of these forums. i don't have a buffer. haven't noticed a big difference since i took the last buffered pedal off my board. maybe i'd love it if i put one on. i don't pretend to think that anyone in an audience watching my band would notice at all, but worrying about tone is as much a fun hobby as it is anything else, as i'm sure is the case for many people here. it also falls into the "everything helps a little, nothing helps a lot" kind of thinking. it's the cumulative affect of worrying about the small things at every step that can ultimately make the difference between decent tone and killer tone.

if your straight through signal is brighter than with your pedalboard, then turn the treble on your amp up.

it doesn't really work like that really. my amp, and most amps have a passive high pass filter for the treble control. meaning that turning it up allows more of the high frequency content that has reached the filter to pass through it. if you're losing high frequency content through shitty bypass and lots of cable, the treble control is not going to recreate that lost content. yes, you can make it brighter, but you're doing so with a reduced signal content and it's not going to be the same.

if you care this much about this crap then go into designer furniture manufacturing. dont most of you guys play doom or another heavy type of music? it matters even less.

i don't make designer furniture, but i do some fancy carpentry. i haven't found that it reduces my desire to sound good or have sweet gear. also, just because you don't like or care about a genre doesn't mean that guitar tone matters less in that genre. or just because mike scheidt isn't going for the same tone as nels cline it doesn't mean that it doesn't matter.

for all those confused, go watch a Nels Cline play and tell me his tone sucks.

this makes no sense. nels cline has all kinds of boutique shit and a klon and a couple of buffers on his board.

i'm not trying to pick a fight. i like you, just posts like this don't make sense to me. especially on a guitar effects forum.

[Ro_S]

I like pedals with a buffered bypass both at the front and at the end of a pedal chain. And I have two pedal chains: one into the amp and one in the amp's effects loop.

I want the buffer as near to the front of the pedal chain as possible, but in practical terms that means after any picky vintage style fuzzes which I'll have right at the front.

I like Visual Sound's pedals partly due to their patent 'true tone' buffered bypass. I think even their 'garage tone' budget series pedals have it.

p.s. You might find these videos interesting:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOBn75-WN30[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOWeoizp4y0[/youtube]

p.p.s and...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZUHXIygaOg[/youtube]

[pigmaker]

some of my pedals suck with a buffer in front

some of them are way better with a buffer after

i find it good information to have when trying to build a big ass pedalboard

P.S. THnks for the vids bro

[Ro_S]

I've added a third video above too.

[Ancient Astronaught]

dont most of you guys play doom or another heavy type of music? it matters even less.

[pigmaker]

i play bluesy ish guitar driven rock stuff lately, so that gives me carte blanche to be a tone prick.

something i noticed, seems like my ghost fx stuff REALLY comes alive with a buffer after. big difference with and without.

[pigmaker]

sorry for the lame question but-

i have some pedals that are AC adapter only, i want to power them with 9v instead
i have seen the plug that allows you to plug a 9v into it and then plug that into a boss-style jack on a pedal
and ive been looking all over and cant find those things
anyone know what those are called? thanks

[Ro_S]

sorry for the lame question but-

i have some pedals that are AC adapter only, i want to power them with 9v instead
i have seen the plug that allows you to plug a 9v into it and then plug that into a boss-style jack on a pedal
and ive been looking all over and cant find those things
anyone know what those are called? thanks

I just call them an adaptor or converter lead/cable. I dunno if there's an industry standard name for them. I think they're a 3.5mm (1/8”) converter, if that helps?

[misterstomach]

sorry for the lame question but-

i have some pedals that are AC adapter only, i want to power them with 9v instead
i have seen the plug that allows you to plug a 9v into it and then plug that into a boss-style jack on a pedal
and ive been looking all over and cant find those things
anyone know what those are called? thanks

i have a couple of those. they're normally sold so that you can plug battery only pedals into a power supply, but they work in reverse too, i'm pretty sure. can't remember what it was called as far as search terms or whatever, but it was easy to find and cheap.

edit: here's a link to an ebay auction for one for 3.50. the voodoo labs product code is PPBAT, if that helps.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Voodoo-Lab-Peda ... 0735894557

[pigmaker]

thanks yall. best forum ever

[UnicornTrap]

so u have one at the start and one at the end?

right now i have an old dod comp at the front (buffer) and a boss tuner at the end.

might get a buffer/clean boost for the end at some point

The empress buffer+ has a loop in/out for the chain so it ends up buffering the signal going in and going out (+clean boost on the out). I don't have 2 separate buffer pedals