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previous: Elvis I really don't want to have another... -- 11/8/1998 4:50 PM

Re: How to true-bypass a Boss Pedal?

11/8/1998 7:19 PM
Wyatt	Re: How to true-bypass a Boss Pedal? Pretty much...NO! I crammed a Carling DPDT in an Ibanex box once. It was a tight fit but worked fine. However, the jacks kept twisting and shorting things out and I had to move it to another enclosure. However, with the Ibanex, I could take out the whole chrome pedal assembly and put in a new cover with a switch mounted in it. The Boss isn't anywhere near as versatile. There are drawbacks to buffered bypass, many vintage fuzzes, Fuzzfaces and Tonebenders especially, hate to see a buffered signal. I have had no luck running a buffered box before an effect like the above and highly recommend not using one before them. How do you know you want it to be true-bypass anyway? The reason Boss, DOD and Ibanez switched to buffered bypass was to compensate for signal loss from long cords and other switches. Long cables load you guitars signal and cut highes. The solder and switching in true-bypass pedals has the same effect. While buffered bypass can't help any loading before it, it was designed to take the signal and "beef it up" so it would have enough power to get to the amp without any more loss. This is why the length of cable or amount of effects used after a buffer bypass is somewhat insignificant. It's because of retained power and treble that most pros sill seem to favor having at least one buffered effect in their chain. From what I am to understand from a discussion we had on The Guitar Forum, Micheal Fuller, a huge believer in true-bypass, often makes buffer boxs for the custom pedalboards he makes pros and his new chorus will feature an optional buffered bypass since chorus pedals often fall late enough in a signal chain that fuzz boxes won't be affected, yet a long cable run after the effects will benefit from the buffering. -Y.

11/8/1998 7:19 PM

Wyatt

Re: How to true-bypass a Boss Pedal?

Pretty much...NO!

I crammed a Carling DPDT in an Ibanex box once. It was a tight fit but worked fine. However, the jacks kept twisting and shorting things out and I had to move it to another enclosure. However, with the Ibanex, I could take out the whole chrome pedal assembly and put in a new cover with a switch mounted in it. The Boss isn't anywhere near as versatile.

There are drawbacks to buffered bypass, many vintage fuzzes, Fuzzfaces and Tonebenders especially, hate to see a buffered signal. I have had no luck running a buffered box before an effect like the above and highly recommend not using one before them.

How do you know you want it to be true-bypass anyway? The reason Boss, DOD and Ibanez switched to buffered bypass was to compensate for signal loss from long cords and other switches. Long cables load you guitars signal and cut highes. The solder and switching in true-bypass pedals has the same effect. While buffered bypass can't help any loading before it, it was designed to take the signal and "beef it up" so it would have enough power to get to the amp without any more loss. This is why the length of cable or amount of effects used *after* a buffer bypass is somewhat insignificant.

It's because of retained power and treble that most pros sill seem to favor having at least one buffered effect in their chain. From what I am to understand from a discussion we had on The Guitar Forum, Micheal Fuller, a huge believer in true-bypass, often makes buffer boxs for the custom pedalboards he makes pros and his new chorus will feature an optional buffered bypass since chorus pedals often fall late enough in a signal chain that fuzz boxes won't be affected, yet a long cable run after the effects will benefit from the buffering.

-Y.