My pedal board and tone loss issues.... (long post)

[Rotti]

Which has more to do with loss of tone in a pedal board setup?

1) Using those cheap thin cables between each pedal
or
2) cheaper, not "true bypass" pedals?

I'm talking about six pedals....
Compressor - Wah - overdrive #1 - overdrive #2 - chorus - delay.

I was very happy with my pedal board when I first built it. For playing live, I could get lots of different sounds and it sounded good. That was with a set neck guitar loaded with humbuckers. Now I'm playing a Strat with vintage single coils. I LOVE the sound of the Strat straight into the amp (Fender Super Reverb). And it sounds good with just an overdrive pedal but when I plug into the whole pedalboard I really notice the loss of tone. The guitar sounds thin in comparison.
The simple answer is skip the board and play straight into the amp, but when playing live I like to have the overdrive boosts and some delay, chorus, etc.....

[ElectriK]

Thats not a very long post at all. I would say the culprit is mainly the non true bypass pedals, but if you urpgrade your cables, it should help a bit.

[red5]

Depends how bad your cables are. They would have to be pretty bad to have a tone loss. How many ohms would the cable have to be able to carry to be higher than the impedance of the pickups over the cable? I really am not sure but I would guess its like a million....

[bduersch]

The simple solution may be to get some sort of a buffer... if you've got low output (strat) pups to begin with, trying to figure out if the pedals or cables or at fault probably won't help much.

A buffer at the front of your signal chain will convert your guitar signal to low impedance, which will travel long cable/FX runs without as much volume or high-end loss.

Several options to consider:
- Axess Electronics buffer -- the most transparent, based on what I've heard
- WOBO buffer -- seems to give a slight high-end boost
- VHT Valvulator -- uses tubes and can also be used to power up to 4 pedals, but I've always had problems with them adding slight levels of gain/distortion
- Morley Bad Horsie -- theoretically has a built-in buffer, as do many of the new Visual Sound pedals. They'd have to be first in your signal chain to make a big difference, though.

--B

[Rotti]

Hmm, I have a Morley PWA II, would that have the same buffer? I used to have the Morely 1st in the chain, and now that I think of it I really only noticed this problem after moving it to #2 spot.

[bduersch]

I don't know... I thought only the Bad Horsie's had the "clear tone" buffers, but perhaps it's built into some other Morley pedals as well. May be worth switching the order around to see if it makes any difference.

--B

[Rotti]

Yes the PWA II has it also. I'll try switching them tonight.

[vaijem777]

I've experimented with my signal path a bit and have had great luck using a ZVex Super Duper to make up for any signal loss. It's got (2) independant clean boosts that are totally transparent. I leave one on all the time and the second one kicks in when I'm using my Strat.

[chris101]

Which delay pedel? Non true bypass pedels will kill your tone, unfortunatly most arnt true bypass!

[rgr]

Too many true bypass pedals without a buffer in the line somewhere will also kill your tone.

[Ant1981]

Wow that's alot of pedals. What do you use for distortion/overdrive? The amp or a pedal?

I don't use alot of pedals, I overdrive the tube amp, use a wah infront and sometimes delay in the loop.

[vaijem777]

Not that many pedals at all actually. I play in a couple of different bands, both of which are totally different. So, I put that board together so that I could play shows with either band using it and my Bogner Shiva combo. Works perfectly!

As for overdrive, the TS-9 is for that "in-between" sound that isn't totally saturated, but isn't quite clean. I can pretty much get any tone I want with the setup. I don't use the Whammy or the Ultimate Octave that often, but I like to have the option to use them if I want to.

For the occasional blues gig, I'll just throw (2) TS9s and a wah in front of my Matchless.

[screamndemon69]

i get a small loss of signal from my Boss PW10 pedal but not enough for me to drop it out of the board. i can hear a very faint digital noise if i crank up my amp and i'm guessing it is the PW10 and the DD20 delay. again, not enough to warrant taking them out of the chain all together.
i've never heard of the "buffer"? i've thought about getting the George L cables but haven't dropped the $ for those yet.

[toma]

Originally Posted by chrisstevenson

Which delay pedel? Non true bypass pedels will kill your tone, unfortunatly most arnt true bypass!

is the ad9?

[vaijem777]

Originally Posted by toma

is the ad9?

Nope.