Buffers, Capacitance & True Bypass Loop Switchers (Question)

I used to eschew pedals, now I shoe them (step on them) a lot! It is quite fun, actually, and I'm getting some cool sounds.

All of a sudden, this guy who could never understand why guys have so many pedals and big, fancy pedalboards . . . has a big, fancy pedalboard with 12 or so pedals on it!

My new pedalboard was assembled for me by a friend mine who is a studio engineer and a very meticulous dude.

All the pedals except the wah are isolated, and activated by, a Pedalracks loop system. So when I'm using only one pedal, my guitar signal is going through only one pedal. I step on the loop switches, not the pedals.

I know some of my pedals are true bypass pedals and some are probably not. Most of them probably are. I have a Rat, a Skreddy Screwdriver, a Bad Bob, a Greer Tonesmuggler, an Earthquaker Devices Dreamcrusher Fuzz, a Catalinbread Pareidolia, a DOD Vibrothang, etc.

But yesterday, for the first time, I plugged my guitar straight into my amp to see if I could hear a difference between that sound and the sound running through the pedalboard with none of the pedals engaged.

And I was surprised to hear a very noticeable difference. I liked the straight guitar-into-amp sound quite a bit better. It was just a purer signal. Not that subtle of a difference really.

So a guitar through one guitar cable sounds clearer and better than a guitar through two cables and a loop system (essentially like a third cable, I'm guessing). I guess that should be obvious, right? More cable equals more capacitance equals less clarity??

So my question is, would it make sense to use a buffer pedal somewhere in the chain even though I have everything on bypass loops? Is cable capacitance the explanation for the difference I hear and would a buffer pedal added to this already elaborate setup help make the bypass tone using the pedalboard closer to the sound of a guitar plugged right into the amp with one cable?

Or is it one or the other; either you use buffers without a loop system or you use a loop system?

Thanks.

A your ear showed you, true bypass doesn't always equal better tone. Basically, between your guitar cable, your looper, and your cable to your amp. That's a lot of cable for your signal to travel- and that's before other pedals are even brought in via the looper. Buffers can be helpful (and are even recommended) in a situation like this.

Imagine your guitar signal like water flowing from a hose. A buffer can act like your thumb when is placed over the to of the house; the water flows harder. Put too many buffers in your chain and you've weakened the 'stream' so to speak.

Ideally, the setup would be to have a buffer before the looper and one after it. That way, you push your signal through all the pedals and then push it from your board to your amp. I would start off with one and see if it makes a difference with your rig before getting a second one.

Also, what might be a little more practical than buying a buffer is to take one of your pedals that has a good buffer built in and taking it out of the looper so that it's always pushing your signal through it's internal buffer. I do this with my board instead of buying dedicated buffers.

I know this is a lot to digest but I hope this post offers some sort of answer to your question

Ok, to make a long story short, here's what I think you need to get your sound similar to what you have when you plug straight in. (aka pete cornish got it right)

Step 1: Get an input buffer
Step 2: Go through pedals and try to only keep the pedals you want to use or will use often. The longer the chain, the more degradation (inc. cable length, inc number of buffers, more things can go wrong, etc.)
Step 3: Get an output buffer - make sure it matches the impedance (?) of your cable as if plugging straight into the amp

*Make sure you have isolated power for each pedal. Makes things quieter
*Keep cable length between pedals at a manageable but minimum length
*Try moving the order around to get the best sound

This is my interpretation of what guys like Pete Cornish and the guys over at LA Sound Design do. I'm sure I miss a few things here and there but that's the gist of it.

You got a long chain and lot of cable.

Get a buffer. Stick it as close to the front of the chain as possible (right after fuzz usually)

Go back to playing.

Troo bypass is still great cause you get to chose the buffer you want and put it where you want to put it rather than having 12 crappy buffers in a row. Way more control that way.

Alternately. turn on one of your pedals and set it to unity with the effect off (like the boost). That will keep your cables from loading your p/ups.

-k

I always use a Treble Booster to punch my Vox in the face. This eliminated needing buffers, because it is first in line and sending a crap ton of signal down the chain. Its a Brian May thing. Ha.

Short answer: with most rigs more than 15 feet of cable between guitar and amp will cause a bit of high end roll off. If you mind this slight darkening of your tone you should put a buffer or buffered pedal in line as close to the guitar as practicable (might have to go downstream of fuzzes).

The reason for the roll off has nothing to do with signal strength, and the buffer does not "drive the signal." What happens is that your pickups, tone/volume controls and your cabling work together as a resonant circuit that is a low pass filter (like a passive treble control on an amp. With a shorter cable the resonant peak of the circuit and the roll off that occurs above that peak, is at a frequency above what the guitar pickups produce. When you add enough capacitance to the circuit (longer cable) that peak and roll off point shift downward enough that the filter begins to roll off some highs from the guitar.

A buffer (just a unity gain amplifier) electrically isolates your pickups from everything downstream of the buffer. It does this because, like any amplifier, it is using your guitar's signal to modulate voltage and current from another source--the buffer's power supply. It's making a copy of your signal. So your pickups are only interacting with the cabling between guitar and buffer, and input circuitry of the buffer--nothing beyond that.

Don't be freaked about the "copying your signal" thing. That's what any pedal does when engaged, and what every preamp and power amp stage of your amp does too.

More explanation and a quick demo of the effects of a buffer here...

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