- Build Rating
I don't have much of a particular use case for this but figured I'd make one in case I ever need a balanced out for a pedalboard.
As far as the build, as you can see I wrapped the power jack and back of board with electrical tape to make sure it doesn't short since I didn't secure this board in any way. I was out of solid wire at the time but using that would have helped. So I added another piece of tape to tape it to the side of the enclosure a little as well and it is holding well.
I did some testing and when I plug my guitar straight in it brings up the volume enough where I can easily clip my interface. That is with passive pickups (JB/59) even with the gain on my interface all the way down where it wasn't too loud before.
I'm gonna assume that since this is generally to be used at the end of a pedalboard or after a preamp pedal etc.. that it is working as intended.
However, for some use cases it may be good to add an active volume circuit beforehand for added control?
I also tried to see how much it changes the tone so I plugged a Little Debbie into this and then into my interface into Reaper.
It sounds to me like it adds mids. (not in a good way) I didn't change the input gain (all the way down) and normalized the tracks to make sure volumes were equal in reaper. To be fair idk how much of that is due to other factors such as my trs to xlr cable or the volumes of with vs without the balanced buffer driving preamps on the interface differently.
I suppose because of the tonal change I'll give it a 4 but I accept that there may be other factors at play such as volumes going into the interface driving it differently, using another cable that trs to xlr, how the interface could be processing balanced vs unbalanced signals, inaccuracies in normalizing the tracks. I would love to hear input from other people who have made one and see whether they heard a tonal change.
As far as the build, as you can see I wrapped the power jack and back of board with electrical tape to make sure it doesn't short since I didn't secure this board in any way. I was out of solid wire at the time but using that would have helped. So I added another piece of tape to tape it to the side of the enclosure a little as well and it is holding well.
I did some testing and when I plug my guitar straight in it brings up the volume enough where I can easily clip my interface. That is with passive pickups (JB/59) even with the gain on my interface all the way down where it wasn't too loud before.
I'm gonna assume that since this is generally to be used at the end of a pedalboard or after a preamp pedal etc.. that it is working as intended.
However, for some use cases it may be good to add an active volume circuit beforehand for added control?
I also tried to see how much it changes the tone so I plugged a Little Debbie into this and then into my interface into Reaper.
It sounds to me like it adds mids. (not in a good way) I didn't change the input gain (all the way down) and normalized the tracks to make sure volumes were equal in reaper. To be fair idk how much of that is due to other factors such as my trs to xlr cable or the volumes of with vs without the balanced buffer driving preamps on the interface differently.
I suppose because of the tonal change I'll give it a 4 but I accept that there may be other factors at play such as volumes going into the interface driving it differently, using another cable that trs to xlr, how the interface could be processing balanced vs unbalanced signals, inaccuracies in normalizing the tracks. I would love to hear input from other people who have made one and see whether they heard a tonal change.
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