Dispelling myths

redrighthand

Visual sound did a series of myth busting videos a while back, where they played a load of pedals to a studio audience and asked them to vote for their favourites. I found them very entertaining, and kudos to VS for doing it (it wasn't rigged so their pedals won every time). Here's one: The only let down, I thought, was that they didn't have any players giving their views, so how the pedals feel wasn't taken into account. Andertons did a similar experiment recently with guitars: Again kudos to them for doing this without fear of pissing off their suppliers. However it wasn't very scientific (hang tags gave the game away at least once) and they ignored the plugged in sound. Anyway, I like these vids a lot, because they cut through a lot of the bullshit (snake oil I believe they call it on t'internet) we are subjected to by the industry. And it got me thinking, perhaps at the next gearfest / meeting of those on this here forum it would be fun to conduct some similar blind testing myth busting experimentation? Just a thought.

ThePrettyDamned

I like the vs tests. People always shout them down because they say they're unfair anyway. I think it's rubbish - they've set the pedals to real world settings, not going from extreme to middle to extreme, but making them sound good.

Which is nice, because it means they lost a couple. The chip shootout on the tubescreamer is the best - differences are, at most, subtle, and they reveal that the standard chip is the same as the 80s one everyone wants, with no change to manufacturing.

mike_l

Photek and myself did something similar a few weeks ago, whilst he was looking for a boost pedal.

It wasn't a "blind" test, but a bunch of different (mine) drive pedals were A/B's into both his Blackstar and my Marshall amps. Surprosingly we both agreed the cheapest pedal, the Bad Monkey sounded best with both of them....

Dave_Mc

Those VS ones are biased in their own way, too. I agree there's a lot of BS around, and I applaud anyone who tried to counteract it, but what VS is doing there, at best, is counteracting the myths in a way that suits VS. It's only half the story, really.

redrighthand

Dave_Mc;30211" said:

Those VS ones are biased in their own way, too. I agree there's a lot of BS around, and I applaud anyone who tried to counteract it, but what VS is doing there, at best, is counteracting the myths in a way that suits VS. It's only half the story, really.

How so?

Dave_Mc

Well, IIRC they use pretty long leads (which accentuates how much help a buffer is), and also IIRC they also only run a couple of pedals. It'd be interesting to see how, say, 10-15 VS pedals stacked up together- maybe they are truly transparent buffers (I know they have a pretty good rep), but often where one buffer is good, several will start to show their shortcomings.

Also I'm guessing the amps etc. were dialled in to suit the buffered bypass tone rather than the unbuffered. I also note the guitar player is using a les paul, and not a strat or tele or something like that- again, a darker-sounding guitar which will again most likely benefit more from the extra sparkle provided by a buffer than a brighter/sparklier guitar like a strat or tele, for example.

There are a lot of things you can do, in other words, to make your way look best. Don't get me wrong, I'd agree that in a long pedal chain you probably want a buffer in there. Just I'm not sure you need one in every pedal. Or that because there's a lot of mojo guff snake oil BS about one method, that the cure for it is a similar amount of infomation of questionable impartiality in the other direction...

monquixote

I think they are making the point that true bypass isn't the be all and end all it's made out to be. 

Provided the buffers are decent I don't think it matters how many you stack. 

Dave_Mc

That's a pretty big "provided"...

Also some pedals don't like being behind a buffer.

I mean, I agree that true bypass isn't a panacea, but neither are buffers (at least the way buffers are normally implemented).

monquixote

Not in their case as the Visual Sound buffer is known to be one of the better ones. 

Dave_Mc

Yep I already acknowledged that in my first post.

(also I edited my earlier post which you probably missed)

monquixote

It only had the first line when I replied. 

Dave_Mc

Yeah I know ) You're too quick

monquixote

When I turn off the light I'm in bed before it's dark

Dave_Mc

)

Sporky

Dave_Mc said:

Also some pedals don't like being behind a buffer.

Only because they are poorly designed.

martinw

I think all the VS tests are pretty good, not just the buffer one. They make a critical point about listening with ears rather than eyes.

Sporky

I like the Pete Cornish approach - buffer everything. That's how you get reliability. If every pedal designer followed the engineering standard of building their pedals as components in a larger system, where the preceding and following blocks are unknown, everything would work with everything. You just buffer the input (to present a suitably high input impedance) and the output (to present a suitably low output impedance) and off you go.

The only downside of buffers is that some people can't design good ones, which is frankly somewhat astounding given how simple and well understood buffer circuits are.

randomhandclaps

Sporky said:

I like the Pete Cornish approach - buffer everything. That's how you get reliability. If every pedal designer followed the engineering standard of building their pedals as components in a larger system, where the preceding and following blocks are unknown, everything would work with everything. You just buffer the input (to present a suitably high input impedance) and the output (to present a suitably low output impedance) and off you go.

The only downside of buffers is that some people can't design good ones, which is frankly somewhat astounding given how simple and well understood buffer circuits are.

I have to say that I totally agree with this.  The understandable love of 'True Bypass' is always used in comparison to horrifically designed buffers.  You see pedal boards with all TB pedals and a high quality buffer - which leaves you with the deduction that if every pedal maker pulled their finger out and set about the entirely simple task of building high quality buffers then all would be well.  I believe a lot the true bypass propaganda is fuelled by companies that are unwilling to invest and install correct buffering. 

What strange is I have now found myself dealing with younger guys who have been brought up building up chains of buffer-less pedals and have grown to 'accept' signal loss over on complex boards and when you re-build and include a buffer to restore lost highs them blame the buffer for changing their tone as opposed to restoring in.

Buffers are like politicians in that there are so many dire ones that it makes you suspicious of the good ones.

Sporky

randomhandclaps said:

I believe a lot the true bypass propaganda is fuelled by companies that are unwilling to invest and install correct buffering. 

Absolutely - for a small builder, TB is much easier to do, so at the beginning of the boutique gold-rush there was a huge marketing movement to promote TB as technically superior. Sadly a lot of people bought it...

randomhandclaps said:

Buffers are like politicians in that there are so many dire ones that it makes you suspicious of the good ones.

Which is just baffling - it's so easy to implement a good buffer and it solves so many problems.

There's not even any reason why you can't wrap a Fuzz Face or Crybaby in buffers and have it sound good if you really want to stick to the old designs.

RocknRollDave

Mythes

Mithes

Myhts

hywelg

I'd suggest that the best approach would be never to have a buffer inside a pedal. Because then you have the problems mentioned above that not all buffers are equal and you only need one buffer not one in every pedal, especially if they might not all play nicely together. Standalone buffers are the way to go for me.

I don't consider I need a buffer as I don't play stages that require me to use 25ft cables and I have done extensive investigations into tone loss through my pedal board and cured 90% of it.  I have been told that I am paranoid, but I personally would consider a buffer, a good quality one, that defaulted to straight through in the event of loss of 9v power.