Members 1001gear Posted December 23, 2022 Members Share Posted December 23, 2022 Anybody using dedicated buffers in their signal chain? I mean in addition to any on the pedals themselves? I tried a couple bypassed TSs and they made some difference on a 20' Planet Waves although I did like the straight in sound of that cable. 10' George Ls was like auditioning Monster Cable hifi interconnects. Don't even know if I could or couldn't detect a difference. Anyway do they have any purpose other than restoring capacitance loss? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators daddymack Posted December 23, 2022 Moderators Share Posted December 23, 2022 I have one in my 'sideman' pedalboard, because I have one of pretty much every imaginable pedal, except octave [never saw the need] and flanger [so early 80s], but usually two delays, a boost, an OD/Distotion, noise gate, chorus/phaser, reverb, tremolo....and I did notice an overall improvement in the signal reaching the amp....plus the outbound cable is 18'. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members 1001gear Posted December 24, 2022 Author Members Share Posted December 24, 2022 It salvages some tone but won't improve it - except by contrast? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Diary Of An Axeman Posted February 17 Members Share Posted February 17 Buffers lower the impedance of high impedance of passive pickups to low impedance and preserves the higher frequencies. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members 1001gear Posted February 17 Author Members Share Posted February 17 Since you brought it up, I still don't get how a signal has an impedance. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Mr.Grumpy Posted March 9 Members Share Posted March 9 On 2/17/2024 at 11:32 AM, 1001gear said: I still don't get how a signal has an impedance. It's hard to explain, but think of your guitar's signal as a fluid going through a straw or pipe. I high impedance circuit has skinny pipes, and over long distances there will be a lost of pressure. Low impedance is like having a "bigger pipe" so signals travel with less loss. A passive pickup can make a decent amount of voltage, up to and even over a thousand millivolts AC, but there's very little current (amps/milli amps) behind it. Sorry this is over simplified and to be honest I don't completely understand it myself, but there you go! The culprit that makes passive electronics "high impedance" is the pickup. The very earliest magnetic pickups used fewer coil windings and stronger magnets to get enough signal strength. Leo Fender got to examine and repair many of these early instruments (Rickenbacker lap steels and so forth) and decided he could improve the pickup design by using more coil windings with a smaller, more focused magnetic field. Luckily, the vacuum tube is well-suited to amplifying high impedance signals. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members 1001gear Posted March 19 Author Members Share Posted March 19 So it's the wires like you'd think not the signal. Which begs the question, what does an impedance converter do? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators daddymack Posted March 20 Moderators Share Posted March 20 On 3/19/2024 at 9:11 AM, 1001gear said: So it's the wires like you'd think not the signal. Which begs the question, what does an impedance converter do? A negative impedance converter (NIC) is an active device that adds or subtracts voltage in series to the voltage drop across an equal positive impedance. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members 1001gear Posted March 21 Author Members Share Posted March 21 12 hours ago, daddymack said: A negative impedance converter (NIC) is an active device that adds or subtracts voltage in series to the voltage drop across an equal positive impedance. Sounds good except I can't grasp the idea. Might as well be an open circuit. :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators daddymack Posted March 21 Moderators Share Posted March 21 7 hours ago, 1001gear said: Sounds good except I can't grasp the idea. Might as well be an open circuit. think of it as matching the number of lanes on both sides of a highway so coming and going take the same time ...not the best analogy, but a reasonable visualization. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members 1001gear Posted March 21 Author Members Share Posted March 21 Still lost. All the connections are fixed resistance but the signal can be charmed to ignore this? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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