The controversial gear thread

[vallaton]

cool pedals! way more digital stuff than i thought there would be.

[AlexGlassLungs]

Oh and the Mr Black Tapex2

[Ghost Hip]

Wait you have 18 pedals?

Post a pic of your rig dog that sounds wild!

I can’t post a photo from my phone but this is what I have:

Polytune mini
Bondi 2026 Compressor
SS/BS TAFM
Cooper FX ARPP
Mr. Black Octave II
Recovery Effects OD
Arc Effect Klone
Ezhi&Aka pre Terverb
Ezhi&Aka Tape T
Industrialectric RM n1
Stamme[n]
Empress phaser
Empress Tape Delay
Pladask elektrisk Romferd
Diamond Quantum leap
Mr. Black Supermoon chrome
Dr scientist Frazz
Dr scientist bitquest

I am not familiar with all of these in regards to if they are true bypass or buffered. Do you have a buffer in your signal at all? Do you run high end cables? Reason I ask is The rule of thumb I am familiar with is after 18.6 feet of cable/signal chain, your high end begins to roll off, and buffers are *supposed* to solve that issue. (I have not looked into how accurate that claim is) Curious your take on that.

Also, this forum started as a Devi Ever forum. And one of the thing she always brought up was buffers affecting the way her pedals react. She has very early videos of putting a bypassed metal zone before and then after a pedal to show the difference. Not as a warning but to show it as a tool for getting different tones out of dirt pedals. I personally find putting a buffer before an oscillating fuzz pedal can sometimes cancel the oscillation and opens up a different way to use the pedal.

[AlexGlassLungs]

Wait you have 18 pedals?

Post a pic of your rig dog that sounds wild!

I can’t post a photo from my phone but this is what I have:

Polytune mini
Bondi 2026 Compressor
SS/BS TAFM
Cooper FX ARPP
Mr. Black Octave II
Recovery Effects OD
Arc Effect Klone
Ezhi&Aka pre Terverb
Ezhi&Aka Tape T
Industrialectric RM n1
Stamme[n]
Empress phaser
Empress Tape Delay
Pladask elektrisk Romferd
Diamond Quantum leap
Mr. Black Supermoon chrome
Dr scientist Frazz
Dr scientist bitquest

I am not familiar with all of these in regards to if they are true bypass or buffered. Do you have a buffer in your signal at all? Do you run high end cables? Reason I ask is The rule of thumb I am familiar with is after 18.6 feet of cable/signal chain, your high end begins to roll off, and buffers are *supposed* to solve that issue. (I have not looked into how accurate that claim is) Curious your take on that.

Also, this forum started as a Devi Ever forum. And one of the thing she always brought up was buffers affecting the way her pedals react. She has very early videos of putting a bypassed metal zone before and then after a pedal to show the difference. Not as a warning but to show it as a tool for getting different tones out of dirt pedals. I personally find putting a buffer before an oscillating fuzz pedal can sometimes cancel the oscillation and opens up a different way to use the pedal.

Yes like I stated before, I do use buffers and buffered pedals and the do affect my signal but as you stated pickups are only built for 18 feet of cable. My delays are buffered and my Klone and then I have a foxpedal buffer at the end of my chain. Using them doesn’t sound great but not using them my signal is weak. There are things you have to do that you don’t always want to do and an excessive amount of buffering for me is one of them. So to me the more time and effort I put in and careful selection of components the better I can preserve my tone

[goroth]

This thread is beyond stupid.

Alex, do you buy directional cables as well?
I'm sure you mean well but your statements are by and large not grounded in any sort of reality. But if you want to believe them, you go for it. It's your party dude.
But please, don't try and pretend that there is anything other than pseudoscience and selective perception and plain old opinion behind your posts.

I am willing to bet the following:
In a double blind test you could not hear if a pedal was digital or analogue.
In a double blind test you could not hear if a pickup was scatterwound or otherwise
In a double blind test you could not pick a Seymour Duncan pickup vs a Blk/tri or whatever other small-scale manufacturer you want to look at.
I'm willing to bet that you have little to no knowledge of electrical engineering nor psychoacoustics nor sound production.

Here are a couple of examples to back up that last statement

No but my pedalboard runs more efficiently on isolated power than a daisy chain... and that’s my point. My pedals can run on a daisy chain just like there is comfort in SD pickups but my pedals run better on isolated power just like my guitar sounds better with scatterwound pickups.

Efficiency has nothing to do with the isolation of the outputs of your power supply.
Please explain how having a common ground affects how your pedals "run".

If I were to plug a digital pedal into my rig I can 100% hear the difference in how the buffer alone effects my amp

Whether a pedal is digital, analogue or hybrid has nothing to do with how it is buffered or bypassed.

I prefer the natural brilliance from my pickup than achieving that through a pedal. There is something extra in natural sounds than manipulated sounds and it’s something you can’t always pickup in a recording.

Can you define natural brilliance?
What is natural about inducing an electric current by changes in a magnet's flux?
What is unnatural about putting a current across a semiconductor?

Ok so if there is no deference why did Keely make mods to the Line 6 Pedals? Why do brands like Diamond, Empress, and Chase Bliss make it so a digital path is blended into your analog path instead of just going straight into a digital circuit? You know why? Because going stight into a digital circuit and back out effects your analog signal... no one would go through the trouble of those designs if it didn’t

Because guitarists are idiots.

So dude, by all means, have a discussion, talk about toan, but don't pretend there are any objective measures in "tone", and don't pedal fallacies as science.

[Jwar]

Half of those pedals are digital.

[AlexGlassLungs]

I went to school for 4 years for audio production so yes I know my sounds, electrical engineering, nope, but my ears are good enough to tell good from bad. Yes my isolated power makes my pedals run more efficiently. If I plug my empress pedals into a daisy chain they don’t function properly. Power is like a water hose, if you have water flowing directly the flow is more powerful than if you have 8 water hoses running out of the main water hose just like power ;-)...as far as brilliance my point was the less stuff I have to get that brilliant sound the better

[AlexGlassLungs]

Half of those pedals are digital.

They’re digitally controlled, not digital

[ritz]

If I'd known we were having this kind of thread today I'd have taken the day off work.

10/10, would lol

[actual]

I still want that CBA link btw. Time to back up your claim of crushing knowledge.

[vallaton]

this might be a false flag operation. it's either skynet trying to make us doubt analog signals or diy punks trying to keep people out of audio production schools.

[AlexGlassLungs]

I’m tired, we’ve been at this since 8 AM I will let you guy go back to doing your thing

[goroth]

I went to school for 4 years for audio production so yes I know my sounds, electrical engineering, nope, but my ears are good enough to tell good from bad. Yes my isolated power makes my pedals run more efficiently. If I plug my empress pedals into a daisy chain they don’t function properly. Power is like a water hose, if you have water flowing directly the flow is more powerful than if you have 8 water hoses running out of the main water hose just like power ;-)...as far as brilliance my point was the less stuff I have to get that brilliant sound the better

Steve at Empress is a fantastic designer. All of his pedals are well filtered. You can daisy chain them without a problem.
Current is often thought of in terms of water flowing through a hose, but there is an idea that more water is more better.
This is not the case.
If a circuit draws 30mA, it will not run "better" if you hook it up to a 2000mA outlet. It is still only going to draw 30mA, leaving 1970 mA for whatever other pedals you have it daisy chained to, or those milliamps can just hang around somewhere else. Excess capacity is just excess capacity.

So that's current flow explained.
What do you mean by efficiency?

I'm not normally this antagonistic, and you have fwiw a sick pedal chain and a great bunch of sounds possible there, I just have no truck for blatant fallacies.

[comesect2.0]

...ive noticed one of my chaos drone synth fuckers will change character when I disengage the echodream, ringmod and jmt synth that come before it...
and their daisy chained

[D.o.S.]

For anyone joining us at this point in our drivetime commute down the Highway of "digital" tone hell and crushing effects knowledge, here are some of the greatest hits:

maybe asking why you put a pedal before another one is too personal or why you don’t care if your dry signal is effected by digital, maybe some of you don’t hear that or maybe it’s that you don’t care enough to hear it and I’m not bashing that either...

I have digital pedals I play with, I’m not saying digital is bad either, for “sweet toanz” I can hear it and personally don’t like it. I don’t play it with my band or record with it, I have it for fun, digital pedals can do a lot analog can’t do.

If I were to plug a digital pedal into my rig I can 100% hear the difference in how the buffer alone effects my amp, on top of that the digital repeats and clarity of a delay for example sound too perfect, clear, and don’t have feel to them, an an analog delay has body and depth to it and has flaws that feel natural. It’s more to it than “I can hear this is digital”. There is a whole feel to the difference in the pedal.

With all the digital gear you use you won’t be feeling much of anything :-/

Hahaha but no seriously, it’s almost equivalent to blasting a ton of compression vs no compression. Something you won’t experience if you done try it

2) Your analog/digital pedal mash-ups- Something I see a lot of is the flaunting of analog or analog signal path pedals. I for one am a huge fan of these types of pedals and quality builds. For slight background on me, I was a straight signal path kinda guitar player with no pedals for a long time and always wanted a great tone from my amp and still do. I’ve always been huge on my amps and Guitar pickups so adding pedals I needed ones that conserved my tone... so for me I won’t put digital pedals on my board. I play with hand wound pickups into anpoint to point I guitar head. I have pedals with PCB and obv you need to but none of them are digital, I don’t want my analog signal path being effected.

my question is for the people spending a ton of money on their gear, who have spent thousands of dollars on your Guitar Amps pushing digital pedals into them. Why? Why would you put so much into your direct signal and distort it with digital effects? Again this isn’t me calling you out, it’s me simply asking your reasoning behind this. Also to add onto this, besides digital pedals I see a lot of “lesser quality brands” on pedalboards with really amazing pedals on them. Besides the function of what it’s doing, can you not hear the lesser quality of the product, say EHX for example... ok go!

At this point the square wave forms of digital are so small I can’t tell but I can tell how they react with my other pedals and my amp and most of all my signal

Ok so if there is no deference why did Keely make mods to the Line 6 Pedals? Why do brands like Diamond, Empress, and Chase Bliss make it so a digital path is blended into your analog path instead of just going straight into a digital circuit? You know why? Because going stight into a digital circuit and back out effects your analog signal... no one would go through the trouble of those designs if it didn’t