Skip to content
True bypass on effe...
 
Notifications
Clear all

True bypass on effects

26 Posts
7 Users
0 Likes
5,040 Views
(@steve-0)
Noble Member
Joined: 20 years ago
Posts: 1162
 

gnease is absolutely right, basically from what i've learned it's capacitors on either the input or the output that have a DC offset. This popping can be removed by adding a high resistance (1M ohms or so) from the input to ground between the capacitor and the input or output.

Someone mentioned that buffers might be better than true-bypass, here's an article that sort of debates that issue:

http://www.muzique.com/lab/truebypass.htm

kind of interesting because it shows you that chaining 6 true bypass pedals (each with 1' jumpers) together with 2 20' cables (one cable attaching the guitar to the chain, the other attaching the chain to the amp) has almost the same amount of capacitance (what causes 'tone sucking') as the 20' cable.

Steve-0


   
ReplyQuote
(@scrtchy)
Estimable Member
Joined: 17 years ago
Posts: 106
 

i am at the moment using 4 pedals in this order:

Axis Fuzz (true bypass), modified Vox wah(true bypass), older EH Small Stone(true bypass added), and finally a Rocktek chorus (buffered not true bypass). I find that where I put the non true bypass pedal in the chain with all pedals switched off greatly effects the straight through tone of my guitar. Keeping it last in the chain gives me the most range of straight through tone. I figure if I add 3 more pedals, the 3rd one would want to be non true bypass... but I don't havet the money right now to get more pedals to experient with. Has anyone else toyed with this extra tone shaping possibility and used it with 7 or more pedals?

http://www.daughtersandsons.net -Cincinnati CEA Award winners for best original RnB/Funk band! (Bragging is in the user manual and encouraged)(Hi Mom)


   
ReplyQuote
(@billyboy)
Estimable Member
Joined: 16 years ago
Posts: 91
Topic starter  

i am at the moment using 4 pedals in this order:

Axis Fuzz (true bypass), modified Vox wah(true bypass), older EH Small Stone(true bypass added), and finally a Rocktek chorus (buffered not true bypass). I find that where I put the non true bypass pedal in the chain with all pedals switched off greatly effects the straight through tone of my guitar. Keeping it last in the chain gives me the most range of straight through tone. I figure if I add 3 more pedals, the 3rd one would want to be non true bypass... but I don't havet the money right now to get more pedals to experient with. Has anyone else toyed with this extra tone shaping possibility and used it with 7 or more pedals?

Scratchy-

Been playing around with this for a while. All my pedals are true bypass - very noticable difference with all off as opposed to just one on. The volume cuts by about a third with all off.

Some of the links people here have posted talk about putting a buffer pedal at the very start of your chain (can be any pedal as long as it's buffered, and it doesn't even need to be 'on', just buffering and loading the signal some for the rest of the chain).

Curious, when you say 'tone' is it simply volume..?

"In my dreams your blowin' me... some kisses" - Lets Duet - Dewford Randolph Cox


   
ReplyQuote
(@steve-0)
Noble Member
Joined: 20 years ago
Posts: 1162
 

No, although running alot of buffered pedals in a row can cause a decrease in volume, tone loss is not a loss of volume, but rather a high end frequency loss, like rolling the tone knob down on your guitar.

Are you sure you don't have the volume knob on one of your pedals higher than usual? For example, on most pedals that have either a volume or a level control, I find that if you keep it at half then the volume will be the same when you have a pedal on then when you have it off.

I've run over 10 pedals in a chain before, most of them boss pedals and a couple of true-bypass, and i didn't notice a significant drop in volume or tone.

Steve-0


   
ReplyQuote
(@ignar-hillstrom)
Illustrious Member
Joined: 21 years ago
Posts: 5349
 

Just on a sidenote: IMHO people worry too much about all this. If you're playing your guitar in your bedroom, with two pedals, some cheap cables and an amp the effect of the Horrible Tonesucking is small enough to be rea easily adjustable with some EQ'ing. If you're into homerecording infinitely more tone will be lost in the mic'ing process, cheap AD converters, bad dithering, poor MP3 encoding and you name it. Also, the whole 'sucking' part is relative to the input: there is no such thing as sucked-down tone for people, your audience, who only hear the output. Finally, you can easily get a 'bypass box', a simple loop that completely turns the pedal(chain) off, to make every effect 'true bypass' if you wanted. Just get whatever pedal that sounds cool to you and ignore the true bypass hype. Millions of people praise SRV for his tone, I never heared anyone say it 'would have been cool if it weren't for that awfull tonesucking' or something like that.

Personally I couldn't care less about all of it. Ah, the joy of working digital. That's what you get for working with analog crap, you suckers. :lol:


   
ReplyQuote
(@gnease)
Illustrious Member
Joined: 20 years ago
Posts: 5038
 

Just on a sidenote: IMHO people worry too much about all this. If you're playing your guitar in your bedroom, with two pedals, some cheap cables and an amp the effect of the Horrible Tonesucking is small enough to be rea easily adjustable with some EQ'ing. If you're into homerecording infinitely more tone will be lost in the mic'ing process, cheap AD converters, bad dithering, poor MP3 encoding and you name it. Also, the whole 'sucking' part is relative to the input: there is no such thing as sucked-down tone for people, your audience, who only hear the output. Finally, you can easily get a 'bypass box', a simple loop that completely turns the pedal(chain) off, to make every effect 'true bypass' if you wanted. Just get whatever pedal that sounds cool to you and ignore the true bypass hype. Millions of people praise SRV for his tone, I never heared anyone say it 'would have been cool if it weren't for that awfull tonesucking' or something like that.

Personally I couldn't care less about all of it. Ah, the joy of working digital. That's what you get for working with analog crap, you suckers. :lol:

I agree that people are way too picky about tone/timbre given the level of skill, playing situations, lack of understanding about what-does-what and other, myriad and uninteresting factors. Too many have gotten used to the tones that they've heard on "classic" this or that, and think that in order to play such music, they need that exact amp, that exact guitar and all those exact effects. Nope. Many ways to get close enough. Plenty of other, good but different sounds still waiting around to be "discovered."

OTOH ...

* I could send you a garbage can filled with crap digital pedals -- it's nice they've finally gotten better at a decent $$. I don't choose analog or digital, but what I prefer in terms of sound. And sometimes even crap is king (or queen) for a tune.
* EQ is not a panacea for every timbral issue. It will not fix time domain (dynamics) issues.
* Some (usually older) pedals that sound really nice, do have idiot-designed buffers that screw up other pedals when off. True bypass is an easy way to know that won't be much of a problem. It's not even an expensive design feature.
* SRV played a pretty simple set-up -- though he did use some expensive, boutique amps near the end. I'm pretty sure he knew whether or not his tone was rockin' the right way. For him true bypass was irrelevant.

Back to ...

Agree: People worry about this s#*t way too much.

-=tension & release=-


   
ReplyQuote
(@billyboy)
Estimable Member
Joined: 16 years ago
Posts: 91
Topic starter  

For the fellow newbs still learning about effects setup, etc. here's another good read. Check out the section "The Pete Cornish Method For Eliminating Level Inconsistencies, Tone Sucking, and Noise From Your Pedalboard", interesting exercise.

http://www.guitarplayer.com/article/chairmen-boards/may-08/35211

Also, honestly had not seen any examples of 'loop switchers' before - eureka. What a simple and elegant solution. Being able to mix and match any of a handful of carefully chosen pedals with the click of a switch, anything not in the selection is removed from your chain. Here is the pricey ($999) GigRig Pro-14 mentioned in the article (click on the Flash demo).

http://www.thegigrig.com/acatalog/Flash_Demo.html

cheers, big ears.

"In my dreams your blowin' me... some kisses" - Lets Duet - Dewford Randolph Cox


   
ReplyQuote
(@steve-0)
Noble Member
Joined: 20 years ago
Posts: 1162
 

I think I would go digital, or even just ignore the 'tone sucking' before even thinking about paying $999 for something like that.

Steve-0


   
ReplyQuote
(@gnease)
Illustrious Member
Joined: 20 years ago
Posts: 5038
 

A number of companies now offer manual and programmable switching matrices for FX pedals. Cool, but pricey. Def for the performing pro.

-=tension & release=-


   
ReplyQuote
(@billyboy)
Estimable Member
Joined: 16 years ago
Posts: 91
Topic starter  

Curious, what would you guys prefer if you had the cash to splurge on a dream setup? Not talking guitaramp but anything inbetween. Some kind of custom rig with individual pedals, or an all-in-one?

What looks great about the loop switching, you can combine any number of pedals with one click and not be tap dancing. If your really into picking just the individual pedals (analog, digital, vintage..) etc and combining them it seems like a really flexible (but expensive) way to experiment. You have the option to interchange anything at anytime. And when selected, everything else is by-passed.

Steve-0, and by digital are you talking about all-in-one like the Boss GT-10, Pods, etc?

"In my dreams your blowin' me... some kisses" - Lets Duet - Dewford Randolph Cox


   
ReplyQuote
(@steve-0)
Noble Member
Joined: 20 years ago
Posts: 1162
 

Steve-0, and by digital are you talking about all-in-one like the Boss GT-10, Pods, etc?

Yeah, I just think that unless I have a very nice record deal or something along those lines, then I don't imagine how I could afford spending that much money on just a pedal (I thought spending $150 for my used Whammy pedal was a bit too much :lol: ).

I'm not against digital equipment by any means: I own a Digitech Synth Wah, which is basically a envelope filter/auto wah. I also owned a Digitech RP80, which was a pretty decent multi-fx unit (in my opinion), despite almost no switching options.

When I started getting interested in electronics in school then I started learning how to modify and build my own effects pedals, that's why I'm currently into single effects pedals mostly.

It's hard to say what I'd go with for a "dream set-up", if i had an amp with an effects loop (one of the downsides of the EVJ) then I'd probably stay with single effects, i find there's alot more control with single effects than multi-fx units (but i haven't played alot of the newer units so i can't say for sure).

Steve-0


   
ReplyQuote
Page 2 / 2