Line drivers and dedicated buffers

[Polar Bear]

Chaps, I have many pedals, cables and guff, and I'm losing a ton of top end when plugged in. Who knows about line drivers and dedicated buffers? Who wants to tell me which ones a good? Does anybody have anything for sale? I do have a black toast last on my board currently.

[rickenbackerkid]

Basically, there isn’t a lot of difference between these fancy boutique buffers, and the buffer in a Boss pedal.

You probably already have at least one buffer. Post your board, and I’ll see if I can help.

From memory you have an older Crybaby? that probably needs TB’ing for a start. If you want to send it to Masterton, I can do it for you, it’s not difficult.

[Cdog]

Gotta have'em imo... lotsa pedals have them inbuilt anyway. There's plenty of good circuits to choose from, I remember Clarky swearing by his 'Inline Redeemer' or something... it's got a secret mojo recipie I haven't seen any schemos for.

[Polar Bear]

I should have added, I'm talking about external, dedicated buffers.

Basically, there isn’t a lot of difference between these fancy boutique buffers, and the buffer in a Boss pedal.

You probably already have at least one buffer. Post your board, and I’ll see if I can help.

From memory you have an older Crybaby? that probably needs TB’ing for a start. If you want to send it to Masterton, I can do it for you, it’s not difficult.

Yep, that's off the board currently, being modded.

[Polar Bear]

Board is long...
Guitar---->Crybaby (TB modded), Pitchblack, Rangemaster clone, Original TS9, Rat clone, Blood Drive, Modtone Aqua Chorus, POG2, 70's Small Stone, Digitech Digidelay, Danelectro FAB Delay, Ibanez AD9, Black Toast Boost n' Buff clone---> Amp.

[TmcB]

Stop being a wuss and just leave the rangemaster on.

[Polar Bear]

Yeah, it has a slight effect on the clean sound sadly.

[rickenbackerkid]

You have at least 5 buffers already: AD-9, Digidelay, FAB Delay, TS-9, Pitchblack. What's the quality of your cables like? Another horrendous tone sucker is probably the Small Stone, it's a green one right? Put that in a TB loop. I honestly don't think you need any more buffers, you probably just need some good cables and the few worst tone sucking pedals sorted out.

[Polar Bear]

It's a black one, Sovtek built. A TB loop. Sounds like the sort of thing that I don't have, or like. What's the lowdown?

And yes, I do, however I am well aware that they aren't exactly what I'd call excellent, dedicated buffers. I had thought about running a separate dedicated buffer at the front end of the board as well. It would be cheaper to put another buffer in front of it, than to replace all the cables. I'm also not sold on the difference that cables make to tone, just say'n.

[Polar Bear]

You have at least 5 buffers already: AD-9, Digidelay, FAB Delay, TS-9, Pitchblack. What's the quality of your cables like? Another horrendous tone sucker is probably the Small Stone, it's a green one right? Put that in a TB loop. I honestly don't think you need any more buffers, you probably just need some good cables and the few worst tone sucking pedals sorted out.

I guess the Small Stone could be modded for TB as well couldn't it?

[Scooter13]

I went through all this. My board has the keeley TS9 set as the always on buffer early in the chain (but it is in a loop too for when I use guitars with active pickups), and the TC Flashback as the buffer for the fx loop. Everything else is in a TB loop. You can certainly hear the difference between 12m of cable with and without the buffer, but I doubt an audience would. Put a bunch of other pedals and crap cables in the mix and it becomes noticible; makes your signal path soo much longer, with more capacitance over all. Too many buffers is bad. If you dont have a TB looper thing, and a long chain, I would have pedal with buffer at start, all TB pedals, and then TB buffer at end.
Ryan sells road rage stuff, it's excellent.

[Single coil]

Just remember here that buffers don't suck tone, bad input impedance sucks tone.
Your cables must be real, real long. One buffer for every 20ft of cable works quite well; I've found applying that rule +1 buffer works just fine.

[rickenbackerkid]

I had thought about running a separate dedicated buffer at the front end of the board as well. It would be cheaper to put another buffer in front of it, than to replace all the cables. I'm also not sold on the difference that cables make to tone, just say'n.

Stacking buffers on buffers won’t help much. If you already have buffers, then your tone-loss problem is not that you need a buffer, it’s clearly something else.

I concur totally with you on the theory that quality, low capacitance cables make at the most a minuscule difference to the tone.
But going from crappy, medium capacitance to quality, low capacitance made a huge difference to me.

Can you solder? Quality cables don’t need to cost the world.
And seriously, it’s worth either modding that Small Stone, or putting it in a little True Bypass loop, they are notorious tone suckers.

[rickenbackerkid]

http://www.ebay.com/itm/20-PACK-1-4-TS- ... 7307633%26

Plus 3-4 meters of Lava ELC mini from Ryan, plus a little bit of heatshrink, plus an afternoon of soldering = new custom cables.

[Bg]

turn up your top-end knob from 0 to tonne.