Weird guitar/effect occurrence!

[Cmlo]

I haven’t started digging into the why yet, but I thought I would share a crazy thing I’m experiencing.
My guitar has a coil splitter in the bridge pickup in my guitar with a single/off/Humbucker configuration. When I was running it into my Keeley Darkside last night I discovered that the “off” position wasn’t off; from a sound experience it sounded like I was bypassing the fuzz. Not like I rolled back the volume and cleaned it up, like it was straight bypassed clean tone.

On either the single or humbucker setting the guitar performs and sounds as expected.

I didn’t go a thorough trouble shoot as I was in practice, but I did try other pedals in the chain and non of them accepted the “off” mode as an audio signal... there was no sound.

Just thought I’d share a head scratcher.

 

[giovanni]

It sounds to me like the “off” position actually lets through a little bit of signal and the Darkside maybe has enough gain on it that it picks it up? Maybe try another high gain pedal?

 

[Cmlo]

That’s what I thought, but I couldn’t get it to do it in other drive pedals. I suppose the circuit itself could be boosting the input signal beyond what the typical drive pedal it before it hits the output section, where it is greatly attenuated to appear to have a similar output to most?

The other odd thing is if was passing through the circuit (which it must be) I would think the tone and volume controls would have some impact, but nope.

 

[giovanni]

Hard to say without seeing how the guitar is wired. Maybe the signal is somehow bypassing the pots.