bluesguitar65 Posted September 3, 2012 Share Posted September 3, 2012 Here is an interesting video regarding the cause of "tone suckage"....you maybe surprised. Please "WATCH" the video then comment what you think. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOWeoizp4y0 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CowboyBillyBob1 Posted September 3, 2012 Share Posted September 3, 2012 There is obviously a difference. Buffered is the way to go IF you want to keep the tone true. The problem is how do you know if your stomp box is buffered or true byparr OR neither. This video raises the question but offers no solution. Is EQ the answer? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L5Larry Posted September 3, 2012 Share Posted September 3, 2012 It seems that in all the discussions and demos on this subject there is one simple and important fact that is forgotten..... YOU HAVE KNOBS ON YOUR AMP! If your cable and/or pedal setup suck the highs off your signal... turn up the treble knob on your amp. If you lose gain... turn up the volume knob. Done, problem solved. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kaleb Posted September 3, 2012 Share Posted September 3, 2012 Plus, nothing sounds like a guitar, a good cable, and an amp. Pedals (no matter what kind of bypass), effects loops, any other kind of buffering (like wireless transmitters) will mess with that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
badbluesplayer Posted September 3, 2012 Share Posted September 3, 2012 The way to really change your signal is to turn the pedal on! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RowdyMoon Posted September 3, 2012 Share Posted September 3, 2012 How does wireless play into this...just curious. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Murph Posted September 3, 2012 Share Posted September 3, 2012 Plus, nothing sounds like a guitar, a good cable, and an amp. Pedals (no matter what kind of bypass), effects loops, any other kind of buffering (like wireless transmitters) will mess with that. Bingo..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bluesguitar65 Posted September 3, 2012 Author Share Posted September 3, 2012 From what I gather about the video, it was addressing several points. One, pedals were not always the cause of "tone suckage" (lost of the higher frequencies) as the longer the cable used between the guitar and amp it will degrade the sound regardless if the pedals used in the chain were true bypass, and two using a buffered pedal (a non true bypass such as many Boss/Roland Pedals) helped with reducing "tone suckage" when used in the pedal chain. The bottom line was that the length of the cable causes "tone suckage" and not the pedals whether they were true bypass or not. This what I surmised about the video. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bluesguitar65 Posted September 3, 2012 Author Share Posted September 3, 2012 It seems that in all the discussions and demos on this subject there is one simple and important fact that is forgotten..... YOU HAVE KNOBS ON YOUR AMP! If your cable and/or pedal setup suck the highs off your signal... turn up the treble knob on your amp. If you lose gain... turn up the volume knob. Done, problem solved. Increasing the volume louder does not bring back the high frequencies, you are just simply increasing the volume of degraded signal. That did not solve the problem at all. The video also implies that it's a good idea to use a buffered pedal to help prevent/reduce signal degradation (high frequency lost) speciially if using long cables. Using a Boss TU tuner as the first pedal in the pedal chain and perhaps using a Boss NS-2 noise gate or even a reverb/delay pedal at the end of the pedal chain may help compensate signal degradation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EvanPC Posted September 3, 2012 Share Posted September 3, 2012 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bluesguitar65 Posted September 4, 2012 Author Share Posted September 4, 2012 Thanks for this video. Very interesting indeed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kaleb Posted September 4, 2012 Share Posted September 4, 2012 How does wireless play into this...just curious. Wireless units are buffered, and have low-impedance outputs. While certain wireless units compress the hell out of the sound and robs your tone of sustain and punch (especially with higher gain situations), they do buffer the tone, and some of the newer wireless units available today (like the Line 6, AKG, and Sennheiser units for example) can boost a pedalboard. Unfortunately, they're not a good idea if you like fuzz boxes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
martinh Posted September 4, 2012 Share Posted September 4, 2012 I've been around long enough to remember when having a high to low impedance buffer at the front of the signal chain was considered a good thing because it "saved the highs that long cables suck away." Then the fashion became that "anything in the chain degrades the signal, everything must be "true bypass." Is the conventional wisdom going to swing back again? As I understand the situation from my meager engineering knowledge, the amount of "top end" at the guitar amp is dependent on a couple of things: The first is the input impedance of the amplifier itself. Remember the consensus that 250K pots sound more "mellow" than 500K pots? this is because a guitar pickup is essentially a transformer, and the HF frequency response of a transformer is dependent on the output impedance across it. The higher that impedance, the better the HF response of the pickup. Hence the lower value pot (250K) across the pickup rolls some top off . The same thing happens if the input impedance of the amp increases or decreases. Putting a very high impedance buffer at the guitar end negates the effect of the amp's input impedance, and keeps things bright. One purported advantage of tube amps is that the tube is inherently a high input impedance device. The second is the capacitance of the cable. Note that the resistance inherent in a longer cable is not really going to make much of a difference in tone - a few ohms each way will not make any difference to, say a 12K pickup feeding a 500k input impedance. However, the longer the cable, the greater the capacitive coupling between the core and the screen on the outside. This acts just like the tone capacitor on the guitar, bleeding some high frequencies off to ground. This is one of the situations in which better quality cables do actually help a little, as the insulation is usually thicker around the core, decreasing the capacitance. So the "buffered pedal" may actually exhibit more top end in the final sound the the "true bypass" pedal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GuitarBuilder Posted September 4, 2012 Share Posted September 4, 2012 I've been around long enough to remember when having a high to low impedance buffer at the front of the signal chain was considered a good thing because it "saved the highs that long cables suck away." Then the fashion became that "anything in the chain degrades the signal, everything must be "true bypass." Is the conventional wisdom going to swing back again? As I understand the situation from my meager engineering knowledge, the amount of "top end" at the guitar amp is dependent on a couple of things: The first is the input impedance of the amplifier itself. Remember the consensus that 250K pots sound more "mellow" than 500K pots? this is because a guitar pickup is essentially a transformer, and the HF frequency response of a transformer is dependent on the output impedance across it. The higher that impedance, the better the HF response of the pickup. Hence the lower value pot (250K) across the pickup rolls some top off . The same thing happens if the input impedance of the amp increases or decreases. Putting a very high impedance buffer at the guitar end negates the effect of the amp's input impedance, and keeps things bright. One purported advantage of tube amps is that the tube is inherently a high input impedance device. The second is the capacitance of the cable. Note that the resistance inherent in a longer cable is not really going to make much of a difference in tone - a few ohms each way will not make any difference to, say a 12K pickup feeding a 500k input impedance. However, the longer the cable, the greater the capacitive coupling between the core and the screen on the outside. This acts just like the tone capacitor on the guitar, bleeding some high frequencies off to ground. This is one of the situations in which better quality cables do actually help a little, as the insulation is usually thicker around the core, decreasing the capacitance. So the "buffered pedal" may actually exhibit more top end in the final sound the the "true bypass" pedal. Well stated for someone with "meager" engineering knowledge! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
surfpup Posted September 4, 2012 Share Posted September 4, 2012 So the "buffered pedal" may actually exhibit more top end in the final sound the the "true bypass" pedal.[/size][/font] But it's not true bypass! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Riffster Posted September 5, 2012 Share Posted September 5, 2012 To me the issue with buffered pedals is the quality and design of the buffer, some pedals with buffer do not seem to affect the signal negatively while others do in a bad way. Then the issue becomes how do I know if the buffer is good if I have not tried the pedal? from there I simply prefer it to be true bypass. I have two Marshall modulation pedals in the loop of my amp and they do a great job buffering those long cables. I guess it all depends on the whole chain. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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