Let's talk more about buffers: Too many?

[Joben Magooch]

I, like many others (I suspect) have had a bit of a complicated relationship with buffers and/or buffered bypass pedals. I spent a long time believing the school of thought that says "True Bypass or Die" and then swung the other direction and said "High quality buffers are good and can only help" and as with many things I suspect the truth is somewhere in the middle.

Anyways, I recently rewired my pedalboard up with Mogami 2314 cable, which has a capacitance of about 33.5 pF/foot. Previously I had it wired with Mogami 2319, which I believe has a capacitance of about 47.25 pF/foot. In both cases I had approximately ~20 feet of cable throughout my entire board, so I suppose in total I would be looking at about 670pF of capacitance with the 2314 and 945pF with the 2319. In other words, approximately 30% less capacitance with the 2314.

I noticed everything definitely seemed a LOT brighter. At bedroom levels it sounded pretty good and I assumed it was just getting back a bit of lost highs due to the slightly lower capacitance cable. But at "stage" level it was downright ear-piercing. I had to roll off my amp's treble considerably more than usual, and found myself playing with my guitar's tone knob set at like 4-5 (typically I would leave it around 8ish). In addition to being a lot brighter, the general "feel" could be described as more "stiff" or "brittle" and just harsh in general.

So, I don't know what got me on the topic, but somehow I randomly remembered reading YEARS ago an article from Analogman on Buffers and I went back and found it.... He says as follows:

Most buffers on the market are the simplest opamp circuit possible - one opamp stage with unity gain, just a few resistors and capacitors are needed. Even the KLON buffer is like this. Some are one transistor or FET with some simple power and coupling circuit. These do the job of having a high input impedance and a low output impedance to drive your signal to the amp nice and strong. But many cheap buffers like that just don't sound and feel the same as the original best tone described above - a good cord direct into your amp. Some buffers can send too much high end through, and sound brittle or HARD, not a nice feel.

Now it is probably fair to point out here that this particular blurb is given in the context of why the Analogman buffer is a good one that you should buy, so maybe take it with a grain of salt, but to me this seemed to describe more or less what I was experiencing.

I went back and tallied things up and found the following buffers active, along with their placement in my signal chain. Buffers (as far as I know) are bolded.
1. Guitar input to JHS Little Black Buffer
2. LBB to General Tso's Compressor
3. General Tso's to TC Electronic Sub N Up (switchable between buffered and true bypass; currently set to buffered. more on that in a moment)
4. TC Sub N Up to Pro-10 Dual
5. Pro-10 Dual to Informant (DRV) - I believe I did wire it with the buffered bypass as well.
6. Informant to Cleaver (Keeley Katana)***
7. Katana to VP
8. VP to Strymon Mobius (set on buffered bypass)
9. Strymon Mobius to Strymon Timeline (set on buffered bypass for trails)
10. Strymon Timeline to Strymon Bigsky (yes, also buffered bypass)
11. Strymon Bigsky to Strymon Iridium (I believe Iridium's outs are buffered as well)

So...that seems like a lot to me. Anyways, I'm sure it's a case-by-case thing and I'm planning on swapping some in and out/switching to true bypass but I'm curious if anyone else has experienced similar - where too many (or a particular type of buffer, or signal order/orientation) has resulted in a harsh sound? I know much has been said about the interaction between buffers and fuzzes, wahs, etc, but I've not heard too much on this particular scenario described.

***Cleaver/Katana***
This particular pedal has seemed to be a bit more sensitive than others for me...for some reason the interaction between it and my TC Sub N Up has been a little odd. With the Sub N Up set to true bypass (default) and OFF, unity gain on the Cleaver is about 9 o'clock (this was with the Sub N Up going into the Cleaver). But if I engage the Sub N Up and Cleaver at the same time there's a noticeable volume drop and I have to take the Cleaver volume/gain to more like noon to hit unity (This is with the Sub N Up dry signal at 100%). With the Sub N Up set to buffered bypass, and OFF, unity gain on the Cleaver is again about 9 o'clock and stays about this same setting with the Sub N Up engaged as well. It seems to me like this particular Katana/Cleaver works best when it is being fed a buffered signal - not sure if that is normal or not, but figured it was worth noting.

Anyways, as it stands I am planning on switching the big-box Strymons to True Bypass mode, switching the TC Sub N Up back to True Bypass, and potentially removing the Little Black buffer, leaving me just with the Informant's buffer as well as the buffered outputs on Iridium, but we'll see. More or less as before I'm just curious as to whether or not anyone else has experienced similar issues with multiple buffers in their chain.

 

[Alan W]

What you’re going to experiment with is the best way to tune your set up—to an extent, your pickups will be different than others, your pedal order, etc., so it’s hard to generalize. The first in chain buffer can be helpful with longer, or high cap. guitar cables—but, may not be needed. I seem to have a buffered pedal on near the start of my chain, but not always, then again, I use about a 10 ft cable most of the time. I’m guessing I currently have about 20 feet of cable after that first pedal to the amp though, and if there are no buffers in the chain, I do lose some high end. Will agree with Analog man, to a point; I think really simple buffers, made with good parts and fed decent voltage, can sound great. But I’m also wary of having many on at the same time.

With delay trails, it’s tricky, if you want them to ride out after you turn off, I‘m not aware of how that’s done without a buffer, but hopefully someone here will chime in.

My guess is the volume drop is due to a bad impedance mismatch, and having the buffer in circuit takes care of that—so, you could look at increasing the input impedance of the Cleaver and see if that levels it out without the buffer engaged.

 

[Brett]

2. LBB to General Tso's Compressor

If wired according to the build doc, your General TSO is also buffered .

I went down the buffer road at one point and tried several before settling on the Mesa High-Wire. Using the Mesa and trying to avoid any additional buffering between the High-Wire's send and return, I can get very close to the feel of plugging straight into the amp. Before the High-Wire, I felt like my tone was okay but it felt like you described, "stiff".

Full transparency, I have not tried Analogman's buffer but I have seen pictures of the pcb. I can tell you without a doubt that there's a lot more going on inside the Mesa High-Wire than most buffers, including Analogman's buffer.

Someone with more electrical expertise will likely provide better insights into whether or not you have "too much" buffering happening.

How big of a difference do you hear between all pedals in bypass vs plugging straight in?

 

[Joben Magooch]

How big of a difference do you hear between all pedals in bypass vs plugging straight in?

Definitely a noticeable difference. Plugging straight in is just fine, exactly as I would expect/want to hear...once everything else is added in - even bypassed - it's just a lot more brittle feeling. Straight into the amp (well, Amp sim - I use an Iridium) has a little bit of compression of its own, and...I don't know how to describe it without using too many buzzwords but it feels more "chewy," like you can dig into it more. With the full chain it almost feels like you'd get from plugging straight into a console or audio interface - there's no "give" or compression or anything to "dig in" to. Just not particularly pleasant in general haha.

I like the idea of something like the Mesa High Wire as it appears you can run it first and last in chain but I go out in stereo so would need something with stereo returns... :/

 

[Brett]

Definitely a noticeable difference. Plugging straight in is just fine, exactly as I would expect/want to hear...once everything else is added in - even bypassed - it's just a lot more brittle feeling. Straight into the amp (well, Amp sim - I use an Iridium) has a little bit of compression of its own, and...I don't know how to describe it without using too many buzzwords but it feels more "chewy," like you can dig into it more. With the full chain it almost feels like you'd get from plugging straight into a console or audio interface - there's no "give" or compression or anything to "dig in" to. Just not particularly pleasant in general haha.

I like the idea of something like the Mesa High Wire as it appears you can run it first and last in chain but I go out in stereo so would need something with stereo returns... :

If I were in your position, I’d probably start by introducing one buffered bypass pedal at a time until you find one or more than cause your “feel” to change.

 

[giovanni]

My experience with buffers has been the opposite: they seem to improve my tone overall and get rid of cable capacitance low pass. Keep in mind that once you start turning pedals ON, you are also often introducing buffers, because many circuits have high input impedance and low output impedance, especially delays or modulation. That means that if you don’t have a buffer in front, the tone will change (get brighter) when you turn them on. I have experienced this in the past and solved it by enabling the buffer in my Soul Food which is right before mod and delays. This situation can also happen in between drive stages so I tend to put a buffer at the beginning of the chain. But I do try to keep them to a minimum. Chaining too many buffers can create weird filtering artifacts which can be perceived as brittleness or chewiness (I think TPS did an experiment on this). This also all depend on your guitar and amp! So many variables! The best course is to experiment!

 

[RetiredUnit1]

Just last week I was looking at reviews of ABY pedals and most of the great reviews were for buffered, most of the terrible reviews were for passive. I have way too many projects and didn't want to wait so I ended up buying this. Basically a two channel mixer that sets at the end of the pedal chain. So, to summarize, "buffers good"

Even if you're not going out to two amps, it'll clear your sound up with increased signal strength

 

[HamishR]

Even though I love a good delay and reverb, and would struggle without a decent OD pedal, I don't like using many FX in front of the amp. I love having a large range of pedals - just not in a chain in front of my amp! I've sold a lot of pedals simply because I didn't like how they messed up my basic sound. I can't use Boss pedals for example, as much as I love the DM-2W. The first thing I test (sadly) with any new delay or reverb is how much tone-suck it has.

Bizarrely TC Electronics Flashback delays have excellent buffers - better than delays costing many times more. Anyway, right now all I have on my board is a Korg tuner, a dual OD (No buffers!), a UA delay and a Strymon Flint. And generally when gigging there is less on the board. Usually just an OD and a delay. The way buffers work does my head in.

 

[Joben Magooch]

Nothing too groundbreaking to report, but…

I went ahead and swapped all the Strymon big boxes to true bypass mode. As I understand it buffered bypass is required for “trails” but I don’t find myself needing to switch off my delay/reverb and have trails persist enough that would require this…

Swapped the Sun N Up back to true bypass as well.

Removed my standalone buffer.

So by my count that leaves: General Tso, Informant, and buffered outs on the Iridium.

If nothing else I’m pleased to report that I can’t hear any negative impact (or any perceptible impact whatsoever). I did some A-B recordings and couldn’t discern any meaningful differences. So I suspect for my rig the aforementioned buffer sources are more than enough without needing to add any others.