Why arent all pedals true by pass?

[Axe_34]

SUPER VELCROBOY changed his avatar.

I is very happy!! No more snot!!

[frankiej]

{censored} my board at college is all boss pedals expect my De-7.

my amps not the best but it still sounds pretty damn good.

[Agreed]

Considering how lossy and noisy guitar amps are anyway (I mean, come on, what we're looking for, the thing that makes them so nice for guitarists, is their absurdly high THD figures), I've never been impressed by the ~
A long, true bypass signal chain will lead to noticable tone sucking as the capacitance and impedance of the circuit deviate from the nominal (well, nominal, not really the right word here - how's "the non-tone-sucking") values. As stated, one good way around this is to have a quality buffer up front, but frankly the whole enterprise smacks of trend-hopping inanity and isn't very far away from ludicrous things, like claiming that it is necessary to protect from the skin affect at audio frequencies and charging more for litz wire in guitar cables. Oh, wait, that goes on too.

Maddening, from a sensible standpoint. The only instances where you should genuinely worry about TB or Buffered are the aforementioned bad buffers, or if a pedal you really want to use doesn't play nicely with a buffer in front of it.

[CicadaSilence]

Because you touch yourself at night.

[Rid]

Because true bypass is a goddamm buzzword of modern days excuses for guitarplayers, that spends more time with gear than playing:D

[MonkeyKnifeFighter]

This thread is bad.

~MkF!
"Remember when I used to bring lunch every single day?!"

[Zachman]

This has been discussed on the forum countless amounts of times, and what it really comes down to is this: If every pedal on your board was TB and everything was off, you'd have a very long length of cable which can weaken your signal to the amp. The common wisdom in here is generally that you should have some form of HQ buffer first, and then TB for the rest. I run 2-3 boss pedals in front of my amp and a few in my switchable loop and have no problems.

[Welladjusted]

Supply and demand. Nobody's pressuring Boss, MXR, or Ibanez to convert to true bypass. And if they are, they're selling enough of their pedals as is that they don't see any reason to switch.

 

There's no reason for them to change how they make their pedals if they're not losing business. If it ain't broke, don't true bypass it.

[ambys]

Considering how lossy and noisy guitar amps are anyway (I mean, come on, what we're looking for, the thing that makes them so nice for guitarists, is their absurdly high THD figures), I've never been impressed by the ~ A long, true bypass signal chain will lead to noticable tone sucking as the capacitance and impedance of the circuit deviate from the nominal (well, nominal, not really the right word here - how's "the non-tone-sucking") values. As stated, one good way around this is to have a quality buffer up front, but frankly the whole enterprise smacks of trend-hopping inanity and isn't very far away from ludicrous things, like claiming that it is necessary to protect from the skin affect at audio frequencies and charging more for litz wire in guitar cables. Oh, wait, that goes on too. Maddening, from a sensible standpoint. The only instances where you should genuinely worry about TB or Buffered are the aforementioned bad buffers, or if a pedal you really want to use doesn't play nicely with a buffer in front of it.

 

 

I agree with you on the amp issue. Generally speaking, worrying about pedal noise is like looking for a fire extinguisher to deal with a forest fire. My mantra here has always been "if you don't find a problem, you ain't got a problem" but I topped the thread because low and behold--I found a problem.

 

Just curious, is there a general consensus on which companies make good buffers and which companies make bad ones? My buffered pedals were Ibanez (AD9), Korg (old Toneworks) and Gibson (Echoplex). The only one that seemed questionable to me was the Korg, but maybe that's naive thinking?

[aman74]

some people actually like the sound a buffer gives to a certain pedal. I can't remember the name of it, but there's a pedal that people love with a buffer and when it's made true-bypass, they say it lacks balls

But the buffer is out of the equation when the pedal is on.

Buffer's at the beginning of the chain are useful, but keep in mind that some effects don't want to see a low impedance signal.

Also, a quality buffer at the beginning isn't a magic bullet, I mean what do you think happens to the signal when it gets to the next buffered pedal?

[Zachman]

But the buffer is out of the equation when the pedal is on. Buffer's at the beginning of the chain are useful, but keep in mind that some effects don't want to see a low impedance signal. Also, a quality buffer at the beginning isn't a magic bullet, I mean what do you think happens to the signal when it gets to the next buffered pedal?

 

 

A buffer can also be a benefit at the end of a chain before a long cable run from the board back to the amp.

 

BUT... NOT all buffers are created equally

[kittycaster]

Regarding buffers in the front of the chain, a lot of fuzz pedals and treble-booster pedals sound dramatically different with a buffer in front.

I prefer to put my wah, fuzz, treble-booster, and other non-opamp dirt boxes first and then put a pedal with a 'quality buffer' before the delays and mods.

This is probably one reason why many folks prefer true-bypass pedals - buffers mess up the sound of the more primitive pedals like fuzz faces.

[Tone Eee]

Exactly, kittycaster!
I agree "TB" it is a buzzword and such, but it DOES seem to make a difference when you're talking about old-school Germanium dirtboxes. Put your boss flanger in front of that and it sounds like ass. Put it after and

[Rid]

What really makes life difficult is the varying impedances!

Take the OCD....everything gets kinda muffled as it has a terrible output impedance!

Making sure that it is always more dark sounding than it is in reality.

Not to pick on it......just an example.

[SammyHawk]

If you really want it true bypassed, make it true bypassed yourself.

[andreas]

I don't see Boss going TB anytime soon - the idea of buffering is to foolproof the design, which to the masses is more important than true bypass. If all pedals are fully buffered, they will be completely independent, so they can be placed in any order without interacting with each other.

A different approach to this is to go true bypass - here, the idea is to remove any circuits not in use from the chain, to make it as short as possible. Again, there can be no interaction between the pedals (as they are physically removed from the chain when bypassed).

Both approaches are valid, and both have their advantages and disadvantages. The one approach that has only disadvantages (IMHO) is the system used by MXR etc, where the pedal is neither buffered nor true bypass. That type of pedal does not buffer the bypass signal, nor does it leave the signal alone. That type of bypass system creates its own impedance mismatches, by design, as it places the circuit input in parallel to the circuit input in the next pedal. To me, this is simply stupid - you either keep the pedal fully buffered, to make sure it "looks" the same to both the source and the following input stage in both bypass and active modes, or make it true bypass (to make sure it has no active impact on the sound when it is turned off). The MXR system does neither...

The reason the OCD sounds muffled going into some pedals, while exceedingly bright going into others, has nothing to do with it being true bypass. It is a problem that appears when it is active, which means it is a problem with the pedal itself, and not the bypass system. If Fulltone had wanted to, they could have added a buffer stage at the circuit output (before the switch), with the whatever input impedance the OCD circuit wants to see. That would have given the pedal a far more consistent performance, while keeping the pedal true bypass.

Don't confuse true bypass with impedance mismatches and such - there's no law that dictates that you can't have input/output buffers in each pedal, on the circuit side of the switch. That way, the pedal will still be true bypass (i.e. not present at all when bypassed) and fully buffered (i.e. with the same input/output impedances as all the other pedals) when active. The Fulldrive 2 is wired this way, and it is precisely what happens when you run a Boss/Ibanez-type pedal in a true bypass loop box. When off, it is removed from the chain, and when active, it is fully buffered. To make sure your guitar "sees" a constant input impedance, you then simply need to start the chain off with a (preferably high-quality) buffer stage that stays permanently "on" - that way, your signal will always be buffered (even with all pedals off) but you don't have to have 20 buffer stages hooked up in series...


Here's a pic of my current board, with this type of setup. All pedals are wired for true bypass (either internally, or via TB loops), with the DT-10 serving as the main buffer stage.



Of course, this approach may reveal limitations in the buffers of each pedal, starting a mad hunt for tone... but that's another issue

/Andreas

[Jeremy Skrenes]

Another reason pedals aren't all true bypass is delays. Make a delay true bypass and you loose the trails. So if you finish a solo and you want those last notes to trail off your delay but you don't want the delay to start tracking your rhythm playing, you can't be true bypass, because that cuts the effect off immediately. I think the DL4 can switch between buffered and true bypass.

[spentron]

1. Warranty. Reliabilty and predictability save money. Someone like Boss surely doesn't even try to repair pedals, it's cheaper to replace them, and even then the cost is higher than the replacement itself.

2. Click and player preference. I've definitely had someone try out a pedal, and then they said they liked everything about it but the switch. I've also seen recording done at low volume with the mic right over silent switching pedals.

3. Sound. At the time many pedals were partial bypass tone suckers. I'm sure there were plenty of people that tried out Boss and immediately decided that anything with an old fashioned big switch is going to suck tone.

Incidently, MXR's "virtual true bypass" is technically partial bypass, but cannot be compared to many partial bypass pedals. You would have to hook up 200 of the MXRs to equal one old Big Muff. About 500 to equal a Screaming Tree.

[Zachman]

I don't see Boss going TB anytime soon - the idea of buffering is to foolproof the design, which to the masses is more important than true bypass. If all pedals are fully buffered, they will be completely independent, so they can be placed in any order without interacting with each other. A different approach to this is to go true bypass - here, the idea is to remove any circuits not in use from the chain, to make it as short as possible. Again, there can be no interaction between the pedals (as they are physically removed from the chain when bypassed). Both approaches are valid, and both have their advantages and disadvantages. The one approach that has only disadvantages (IMHO) is the system used by MXR etc, where the pedal is neither buffered nor true bypass. That type of pedal does not buffer the bypass signal, nor does it leave the signal alone. That type of bypass system creates its own impedance mismatches, by design, as it places the circuit input in parallel to the circuit input in the next pedal. To me, this is simply stupid - you either keep the pedal fully buffered, to make sure it "looks" the same to both the source and the following input stage in both bypass and active modes, or make it true bypass (to make sure it has no active impact on the sound when it is turned off). The MXR system does neither... The reason the OCD sounds muffled going into some pedals, while exceedingly bright going into others, has nothing to do with it being true bypass. It is a problem that appears when it is active, which means it is a problem with the pedal itself, and not the bypass system. If Fulltone had wanted to, they could have added a buffer stage at the circuit output (before the switch), with the whatever input impedance the OCD circuit wants to see. That would have given the pedal a far more consistent performance, while keeping the pedal true bypass. Don't confuse true bypass with impedance mismatches and such - there's no law that dictates that you can't have input/output buffers in each pedal, on the circuit side of the switch. That way, the pedal will still be true bypass (i.e. not present at all when bypassed) and fully buffered (i.e. with the same input/output impedances as all the other pedals) when active. The Fulldrive 2 is wired this way, and it is precisely what happens when you run a Boss/Ibanez-type pedal in a true bypass loop box. When off, it is removed from the chain, and when active, it is fully buffered. To make sure your guitar "sees" a constant input impedance, you then simply need to start the chain off with a (preferably high-quality) buffer stage that stays permanently "on" - that way, your signal will always be buffered (even with all pedals off) but you don't have to have 20 buffer stages hooked up in series... Here's a pic of my current board, with this type of setup. All pedals are wired for true bypass (either internally, or via TB loops), with the DT-10 serving as the main buffer stage. Of course, this approach may reveal limitations in the buffers of each pedal, starting a mad hunt for tone... but that's another issue /Andreas

Leading to using a switching system, for me- Eliminating caring about true bypass all together.

You're right though, THAT is yet another issue.

[cloudscapes]

because true bypass isn't the holy grail, unlikewhat too many people seem to think.

that's like saying "why aren't all guitars hollow-body?"
there are uses for both

[AMZ-FX]

True bypass isn't the answer to every situation and it is over-hyped, but it is an excellent way to handle the signal and the problems are vastly exaggerated by manufacturers promoting their own systems... a mix of buffered and true bypass is probably the best setup.

 

More: http://www.muzique.com/news/?p=66

 

regards, Jack

[ambys]

Zachman (or others who care to chime in), what switching system would you recommend for somebody with mostly pedals and only a couple of rack devices? Should I get a rack-based system with a floor controller? Or a floor switcher all-in-one unit?

[TechBrother]

Bypass is for pussies. A real guitarist leaves all their effects on all the time.