Tone suck [Resolved]

monkaiboy

So having built myself a pedal board a while ago (pics to follow, eventually) I finally got round to soldering some patch cables and wiring it all back together. 

Played happily away away for a while before noticing hmmm sounds a bit dull. Plug straight in to the amp and all is good, so sure enough, something is sucking my treble.

Will do some investigation tonight. I guess the possibilities are: cables are the problem, or one or more pedals are doing it. I have a loopswitcher so will do some AB testing with pedals and cables.

Does anyone have helpful suggestions for what is worth checking?

Cheers,
Kai

Sassafras

What pedals have you got? Are they all true-bypass?
You might need a buffer to restore some of the higher frequencies if they are all TB.

stickyfiddle

Is everything true bypass? If that's the case then it's just a question of treble loss from the large amount of cable on the board. Adding a buffer (either standalone or a pedal with one built-in) should fix it. 

Alternatively, could be a wah pedal. The bypass on a lot of Voxes and Dunlops is rubbish.

Gassage

Buffer.

Get the Effectorde one or the empress.

Cols

It might just be a normal loss of top end from the signal having to make its way through a lot of wiring.  In any case, a buffer should sort it out and is a cheap and easy build.  Fuzzdog's stuff is excellent.

http://shop.pedalparts.co.uk/Klon_Buffer/p847124_6346591.aspx

monkaiboy

Effect order:  

CAE Wah -> 

Empress Compresser -> 

Skreddy Lunar Module -> 

Kingsley Minstrel -> 

Peacekeeper -> 
 Lehle Mono volume ->

EHX DMM 1100 -> 

EHX DMM XO -> 

CT5 -> 

Neunaber Slate -> 

Pigtronix Infinity

Buffer huh, good point. Not sure if any of those has a buffer in already - anyone know?

ICBM

The Lehle volume pedal is buffered and is just early enough in the chain that it should eliminate normal cable/pedal losses - if it's any of the pedals it will be one before the Lehle, I think.

When you made your cables, did you strip back the black semi-conducting shield layer on the outside of the core insulator so it's away from the end of the core? If not and it touches the terminal, it will cause a partial short and drastic treble loss, sometimes even if there's a buffer.

meltedbuzzbox

I thought the recommended way to test was to start introducing a pedal at a time and work your way backwards through the pedals? That way you can swap leads etc to find the problem

Dave_Mc

^ you can possibly do it more quickly than that if you're lazy like I am and have a bit of luck (though someone will probably be along in a moment to point out that there's some obvious flaw with this method that I haven't thought of)- if you split your chain in two and try both halves, if you're lucky the problem will only occur in one of the two halves. that means you don't have to try every single pedal.

ICBM

That's entirely logical.

It's the same sort of idea behind cutting a broken cable in half if you don't know where along it the fault is and you want to shorten it to fix it. At worst, you'll end up with a cable half as long. OK, at best you also end up with a cable half as long… but the alternative - cutting a few inches off each end until you find the fault - can leave you with a cable a few inches long if you're unlucky and the fault was very near the middle.

monkaiboy

ICBM said:

When you made your cables, did you strip back the black semi-conducting shield layer on the outside of the core insulator so it's away from the end of the core? If not and it touches the terminal, it will cause a partial short and drastic treble loss, sometimes even if there's a buffer.

Hmmmm it could be this - I was not aware of that. Let me have a look see.... Thanks all!

Dave_Mc

ICBM said:

That's entirely logical.

It's the same sort of idea behind cutting a broken cable in half if you don't know where along it the fault is and you want to shorten it to fix it. At worst, you'll end up with a cable half as long. OK, at best you also end up with a cable half as long… but the alternative - cutting a few inches off each end until you find the fault - can leave you with a cable a few inches long if you're unlucky and the fault was very near the middle.

I may well have got the idea from that cable thing you mentioned!

At the risk of stating the bleeding obvious, If you have a really big pedalboard you can keep splitting the pedals in two and that will save a bit of time as well. If you only have 4 pedals, not much point, but if you have 20 that could save a fair bit of additional time.

monkaiboy

monkaiboy said:

ICBM said:

When you made your cables, did you strip back the black semi-conducting shield layer on the outside of the core insulator so it's away from the end of the core? If not and it touches the terminal, it will cause a partial short and drastic treble loss, sometimes even if there's a buffer.

Hmmmm it could be this - I was not aware of that. Let me have a look see.... Thanks all!

Well, spent last night opening each patch cable and stripping off the excess shield.

Wired the board back together this morning, switched on, held my breath and.......

.....it's fixed!!!

Thanks so much for the advice, saved me a lot of time frustration....

Cheers,
Kai