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I've been away for two years. Buffers don't color the tone and help keep the gain signal from being lost through cabling. Is this now universally accepted and are every single pedal company releasing buffered pedals?

yeah notice how just more and more people use loop strips but they hit them with a buffer before. idk sometimes i think true bypass is better, mostly because its fool proof if your power dies. not all buffers are created alike and some have impedance stuff or filtering which changes the signal. I have never cared what my signal sounds like without effects in the chains (because it's boring and has no effects).

The only valid bypass is the bypass on og univibes

Have never been a true bypass nerd. I have a couple of pedals that don't love buffers so I just keep them in the right spot, hardly rocket science. A buffer somewhere is good for sound.

I like circuits that react to variations of input loading, so the "buffer before everything" idea can bite cheese.

As such I still endeavor to provide a straight wire bypass function between primary input and primary output on all of my builds, but as complexity is evolving there's some non-true bypass legs cultivating in the mists.

coz i'm always up and down on the guitar's volume for cleanup, i am accidentally one of those true bypass weirdos. like i *love* my boss reverb into a dirt pedal but the buffer stops the dirt working how i want it to

Newer buffers may have improved tons but I've still got a lot of older pedals with really shitty buffers, so I prefer true bypass but it's not a deal breaker. I modded my Fab Tone to have true bypass because it's never leaving my board but otherwise it's like coldbrightsunlight said, you can usually figure it out. That's part of the fun of arranging a board, right?

That said, my general instagram wanderings indicate that even bloos lawyers and p&w bros have at least dipped their toes into the glitch pool. Seeing as those were the demographics pushing the gospel of true bypass and I assume most glitch type pedals have buffers I'm assuming there's very few people scanning product descriptions for true bypass anymore.

Its probably not the buffer that you dislike about the pedals. They're largely the same now as they were 30-40 years ago and we're still using the same opamps and transistors in them that we were using back then. Some other aspect of the pedal has a quality you don't like but it probably isn't the buffer.

MechaGodzilla wrote:coz i'm always up and down on the guitar's volume for cleanup, i am accidentally one of those true bypass weirdos. like i *love* my boss reverb into a dirt pedal but the buffer stops the dirt working how i want it to

Like regular dirt like tubescreamers and rats etc? I ride the volume alot and have never thought about that. idr if the hardwire is true bypass or not but i dont seem to notice the volume acting weird

qersty wrote:

MechaGodzilla wrote:coz i'm always up and down on the guitar's volume for cleanup, i am accidentally one of those true bypass weirdos. like i *love* my boss reverb into a dirt pedal but the buffer stops the dirt working how i want it to

Like regular dirt like tubescreamers and rats etc? I ride the volume alot and have never thought about that. idr if the hardwire is true bypass or not but i dont seem to notice the volume acting weird

i don't like rats and i only use tubescreamers for boost*, but any time i have an always-on dirt - like klone, blackstone, ssbs mini, dist+ - i expect to be able to leave it on, walk away, and be able to get a nice clean just using the guitar's controls. in an ideal world, i wouldn't use any OD pedal and could just crank the amp to power stage overdrive but i don't play the kind of rooms where that would be allowed lol.

*goddamn buffer in the TS means i haven't had it on the board in a long time! because i would want to run into, say, the blackstone, but the TS buffer messes up the blackstone's clean capability. this is what i mean by "i am a true bypass weirdo"

Personally I always have at least a couple Boss pedals on my board - I’m never gonna shit on a buffer.

Quite frankly.... I don’t really ever notice the difference but I’m hardly a “subtle” player. Also I’m using active pickups on my bass so do I even know anything?

retinal orbita wrote:Personally I always have at least a couple Boss pedals on my board - I’m never gonna shit on a buffer.

Quite frankly.... I don’t really ever notice the difference but I’m hardly a “subtle” player. Also I’m using active pickups on my bass so do I even know anything?

Same and same and same. I honestly did not know this was a thing until I joined ILF and by that point, I already had enough 'unwarranted/irrational stigmas' to my name. At capacity. Can't take on another.

I truely bypassed all streaming because of buffering.

I have a couple fuzzers that prefer having buffered pedals in front of them, which is apparently a thing? That’s the only time I’ve noticed a difference.

I’ll always be true to my bypass

Woolworm wrote:I've been away for two years. Buffers don't color the tone and help keep the gain signal from being lost through cabling. Is this now universally accepted and are every single pedal company releasing buffered pedals?

Ehhh I'd argue that anything a buffer will do you can undue with something else or improve upon it. I actually use an active bass with a buster buster to make my dirt pedals and pedals that typically can't handle an active bass signal now like it. Or at least play much much better with it.

I do think it's important to have a mixture of digital and analog as well as having a few true bypass and non try bypass. I think almost all my pedals are true bypass now or have an option to turn that on. That's the nice thing about digital these days. It's an option in a lot of digital pedals.

Anyway, I don't hear people talking about it as much. I can't hear certain frequencies, maybe that's why I can't tell the difference? I don't know. It all sounds the same to me.