So… true bypass is a tone suck on all my pedals? (Audio example included)

[kylewetton]

So I’ve always been under the impression that true bypass was mean to completely bypass the circuit, but what do you think is going on here?

Please watch the video and any explanation or clarification will be great for me to learn

 

[kylewetton]

Is there any chance you’ve swapped tip and sleeve on one of your jacks? How’s the grounding? It might help to have some gut shots of the pedals from your video.

I don't think it could be this because of multiple pedals all doing the same thing, grounds and jacks are fine. I tried with a store bought Friedman BE-OD and it was the same thing.
Here's the tyrian and muffin fuzz, both been double checked and no issues with grounding

 

[kylewetton]

True bypass means the circuit in a pedal will not color the tone when bypassed, but doesn’t protect against the natural tone loss inherent in a pedal board due to the capacitance of the connections. The longer the signal path, the greater the tone loss…

Remember: buffered bypass is good, don’t buy into to all the “true bypass” hype…

To be sure this wasn't the case, its the same length of cable for all three
First test is a 2 meter cable into an empty enclosure (with just two jacks, and a footswitch) and then 2m to the amp sim,

The two pedals that drop the high frequencies are both in bypass mode with the same 2m in and 2m out.

 

[bhcarpenter]

Do you still get the drop in highs if the pedals are unplugged from power?

 

[kylewetton]

Do you still get the drop in highs if the pedals are unplugged from power?

Yeah, no change in sound if they're unplugged or not

 

[ChrsGuit]

Buffers help sometimes to put back the treble in a long chain of cables. Try a buffered pedal before and/or after it too

Buffered bypass pedals can also cause problems. I bought a Germanium Treble Booster from a reputable builder (Blammo! Electronics' Zap Master Treble Booster) and it sounded broken... like "Ice pick of death, speakers gonna blow" broken...
Contacted the owner, Dan and he walked me through checking the bias on the pedal... it was a touch low, but not bad off... ANYWAY, he offered to exchange it, and I said "let me try isolating it first".

I took all pedals off my chain except the Zap Master T.B. Sounded much better...
I started adding pedals back the same order I had them, and it ended up being my Boss TU-2 Tuner. So I recommend any Fuzz (especially Germanium) circuits before anything else... especially buffered bypass... Probably the reason why I've hated every Fuzz I ever tried previously

 

[jimilee]

Buffered bypass pedals can also cause problems. I bought a Germanium Treble Booster from a reputable builder (Blammo! Electronics' Zap Master Treble Booster) and it sounded broken... like "Ice pick of death, speakers gonna blow" broken...
Contacted the owner, Dan and he walked me through checking the bias on the pedal... it was a touch low, but not bad off... ANYWAY, he offered to exchange it, and I said "let me try isolating it first".

I took all pedals off my chain except the Zap Master T.B. Sounded much better...
I started adding pedals back the same order I had them, and it ended up being my Boss TU-2 Tuner. So I recommend any Fuzz (especially Germanium) circuits before anything else... especially buffered bypass... Probably the reason why I've hated every Fuzz I ever tried previously

Yep, discovered this a few weeks back. Built some fuzzes and tested them with my looper, which is buffered. Germ anything don’t like them at all. It will drive you mad. When I was gigging, I used the tuner out on my volume pedal, and smaller buffers after the dirt.

 

[kylewetton]

Buffered bypass pedals can also cause problems. I bought a Germanium Treble Booster from a reputable builder (Blammo! Electronics' Zap Master Treble Booster) and it sounded broken... like "Ice pick of death, speakers gonna blow" broken...
Contacted the owner, Dan and he walked me through checking the bias on the pedal... it was a touch low, but not bad off... ANYWAY, he offered to exchange it, and I said "let me try isolating it first".

I took all pedals off my chain except the Zap Master T.B. Sounded much better...
I started adding pedals back the same order I had them, and it ended up being my Boss TU-2 Tuner. So I recommend any Fuzz (especially Germanium) circuits before anything else... especially buffered bypass... Probably the reason why I've hated every Fuzz I ever tried previously

The problem I have is that I have a wireless system as first in my chain, it has a buffer in it so I can't get passed that. I do have a green russian big muff that sounds great in my chain, but I just built a Foxx Tone Machine which has 1N34A in them so I don't know how that's going to go, the transistors are silicon though.

 

[ChrsGuit]

Yep, discovered this a few weeks back. Built some fuzzes and tested them with my looper, which is buffered. Germ anything don’t like them at all. It will drive you mad. When I was gigging, I used the tuner out on my volume pedal, and smaller buffers after the dirt.

Honestly I've played for 25 years and JUST learned this... never really used fuzz at all, and ones I had I never liked... except octavia-style fuzz... now I know why... I had a buffer in front

 

[giovanni]

Can you post pictures of the empty box pedal too? Just in case…

BTW the guys at TPS have discussed the issue of capacitance, buffers and traditional fuzz circuits in many of their videos. I learned a ton from them!

 

[jwin615]

Every time I've run into something unexplainable, it turned out to be a cable. Just saying.