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Yea, you can do some wierd stuff with the ebow but the pickups have to be involved somehow.

Mine has been a magical friend for a couple decades, and been back to the mothership a few times for repair (my fault). Never a charge for it, and it came back as near new.

Is it normal for some fuzz pedals to sound totally godawful after a buffered pedal (e.g. a TU-2) ?

My Nine of Swords 'Hand of God' totally stinks when after my Tuner (I just put it there on my board for spacial reasons for now until I get a new daisy chain). It adds a trebly texture to the top end, and when the strings are muted, my amp sounds all crackly and stuttery. So I moved it after my true bypass tubescreamer clone, and it's less raspy, and the crackle is practically eliminated.

What gives?

That's totally normal. They don't like the buffered signal of Boss pedals. It has to do with impedance issues and such.

As far as I understand they load down your signal which reduces the incoming treble content. The magic clean up and stuff is due both to a reduction in gain and also to changes in the impedance. A buffer retains all of your treble content and "shields" your guitar from the pedal meaning waaaay more treble content and general aggroness and less clean up.

I think...

I had an ebow and i used it on my acoustic guitar, no pick ups involved. Are you guys sure?

It works on acoustic assuming there's enough ferrous metal in the strings.

It's not quite the same though, but I'm about to confirm as I type this.

It works on my acoustic and Axel I tried that Ebow behind the bridge for you before and it doesn't work because the strings are too tight to vibrate enough to generate tone, remember...

Ok, only meaningful sound I was able to produce was a single-pitched feedback on the A.

To do that, I had to make actual contact with the string and the ebow, and it didn't move/change no matter what I did.

Very, very minor effects, no subtlety, it's the only string I could dig in enough on the Jazzmaster with it - the unwound strings didn't go anywhere enough and the E can't get enough leverage. When I say leverage I mean flooring the thing with real pressure, not lightly.

You could tap/play with left hand as well but it was generally quieter than the feedback from the slammed eBow, and not real useful.

Even that single pitch is ugly. And I just can't see a use, but go to town.

goroth wrote:As far as I understand they load down your signal which reduces the incoming treble content. The magic clean up and stuff is due both to a reduction in gain and also to changes in the impedance. A buffer retains all of your treble content and "shields" your guitar from the pedal meaning waaaay more treble content and general aggroness and less clean up.

I think...

greyscales wrote:That's totally normal. They don't like the buffered signal of Boss pedals. It has to do with impedance issues and such.

Cheers for the info chaps. I don't seem to have any other issues with other pedals running directly after Boss (or other buffered) pedals. Does it only affect Fuzz? Or is it just more noticeable with Fuzz?

It usually only affects fuzzboxes. By usually I mean it's pretty much a 98%+ or higher fuzz problem.

But it doesn't cause any problems with many fuzzes; only have a couple personally that have issues post-buffer v. a couple dozen with none.

the buffered signal affects some fuzz pedals and certain overdrives like the manifold drive.
others are unaffected, i was meaning to start a thread that would list which ones were affected and which werent

Problem is whether or not the pedal works after a buffer can also be subjective - I have a couple that sound different after buffers but still sound good or vice versa.

yeah, they all 'work', but the ones that i have tried tend to have more gain, and have a more pinched, trebly sound

The 'Hand of God' pedal worked I suppose, but I wouldn't want to use it with that sound. I prefer it without the trebley overtone which the buffer creates, and when the strings were muted but the pedal was still switched on, there was lots of crackly and stuttered humming and pops, which were just as loud as the guitar tone itself, so it sounded a bit too messy. Wouldn't work if I was to play a riff which was in anyway remotely staccato. Sounds fine on it's own, or after my TS9 clone though, so no worries!

I think someone in the Nine of Swords thread said the same about their Tyrant being too raspy after a buffer. They are both super high gain fuzzes, and made by the same chap, so I imagine they probably share similar components.

thanks for the Ebow info guys

i like to pick there, but i feel like i could use a compressor for that or something... to make it more pronounced without being necessarily louder (now i use a cleanish boost)