So I had a chance today to line up 7 true bypass pedals... my modified crybaby, byoc fuzz, byoc mouse, byoc green pony, byoc orange dist, byoc spring reverb, and alexander jubilee. All with short patch cords and a 10 ft cord in and 10ft cord out. With all the pedals off, there was some tone loss when I compared to plugging direct to the amp with 1 10 ft cable. Enough that I was surprised.
I tried again with the first four pedals only and there was only the tiniest bit of tone loss, definitely not enough to worry about IMO. And, with the guys I play with, there will almost always be one dirt pedal on early in the chain... and any activated pedal should buffer the signal, right?
I would have liked to try some other combinations, but there was too much other stuff going on today and too much noise to worry about more and more trials.
Eventually when I build the delay, that will have buffered bypass (and, until then, I will have the zoom multi effect at the end of my chain which I am sure is always buffering the signal there). I could also add a buffer after the dirt pedals and before the mod/delay/verb when I get to that point if it seems like I need it.
Thanks for bringing this up, it really wasn't on my radar at all and now I am just going to try to keep this all in mind as I add the last few pedals to my board.
jimilee wrote:
Unclesixer wrote:
I thought a half-dozen true bypass pedals with low capacitance patch cords wouldn't need a buffer unless there was well over 20 ft of patch cord involved... maybe i am wrong... I should look into this. I do use a 10 ft cord to the board and another 10 ft cord to the amp right now because they are my only long cords with 90 deg connectors (which play nicely with my board). If i have a buffered delay pedal in there, i shouldn't have to worry about the length of the second cable... right?
I guess I need to set aside some time this weekend to A/B my bypassed clean tone and a direct clean tone...
That’s been my experience. One night at rehearsal, I didn’t want to mess with my pedal oars, and I was blown away by the difference in sound. That’s when I started looking at external buffers.
Hey sure, I was blown away in the difference in my sound as well. I built a couple of buffer to put early in the chain. One is in a mints tin and the other in a round string eas (sp?) tin.