When playing my guitar (Strat Plus) through my amp (64 bandmaster) I was wondering 'dude, where's the tone?' So bought another Fender amp, same problem, and have realized I have too many pedals (eight in fact) mostly Boss with no true bypass, I think this is the issue (read somewhere each pedal has a 'buffer' so you loose volume and tone).

Can anyone suggest pedals with true-bypass (true true bypass)
1 Overdrive (in front of Bandmaster is give a little grit)
2. Echo/delay

I am going to stick to minimum pedals
Any suggestions would be helpful

'Surf Music Lasts Forever'

Jake is right: too many true bypass pedals will suck tone. There are three catagories of pedals: true bypass, buffered, and non-buffered/non-true bypass pedals. Buffered pedals are a good thing. Buffering maintains the integrity of the signal, and prevents "tone-suck", even for non-buffered pedals in the signal chain. Buffering also prevents "tone-suck" from long cable runs. It's an over-simplification, but essentially buffering is a signal booster.

Bob

My take is that almost every pedal I have effects the tone of my guitar at least slightly in a negative way (when it's off but the guitar signal is still going through it). This pedal is expensive but works - as Robbie says above, buffering is the answer.

http://www.tonebone.com/tb-loopbone.htm

You set up your pedals in two groups and can bring in one or both loops as desired. When both loops are off they are completely bypassed. The key ingredient is the "buffer" system in the loopbone; it's adjustable to match your guitar and the end result is that it sounds as good or better than plugging straight into your amp. They also make a product called Switchbone that allows you to toggle between two amps (or use both at the same time). I have both and have found them to be very well made and problem free.

Wombat wrote:

When playing my guitar (Strat Plus) through my amp (64 bandmaster) I was wondering 'dude, where's the tone?'

You have a good guitar and a good amp. Plug your guitar straight into your amp and check the following:

1. Pick. Yes, different picks can have a significant impact on tone. Thicker picks, in general, sound "fatter", Nylon picks tend to be "mellower", things like Ultex can be bright and "clacky". Try some different picks.

2. Strings. Are you using Nickel Steel, Pure Nickel, or something else? Pure Nickel is "warmer" or "rounder" than Nickel Steel (a little less output too, but a "vintage" sound).

3. Pickup height. Adjusting pickup height can make a huge difference in tone. Farther from the strings tend to sound more "stringy" and "woody". Many people say on a strat the bass side of the pups should be flush with the pickguard! The "quack" in positions 2 and 4 can be increased/decreased by the middle pup's position relative to the neck pup, etc.

4. Volume and Tone knobs. Many players run them wide open all the time. I've found I like them on 7 - volume below 5 gets too thin for me, and above 9 is too spiky and too much bottom. Depends on the type of PUP but again, consider listening very closely to the tone with the knobs in different positions and see if you can find an "optimum".

5. Once you've got all that dialed in, then it's time to start adding pedals to the chain. There are so many overdrives out there, and everyone has a favorite. Many people like TubeScreamer type pedals - they add a mid-range hump in addition to the drive that helps the guitar cut through the mix. People tend to favor them with strats and fender amps (which tend to be "scoopy" (less midrange) anyways). If you just want to add a "touch of break up" almost any pedal will do as most of them tend to be fairly transparent at lower drive settings.

Personally, I prefer true bypass unless or until you run into problems and need a buffer, or if your pedal is going to be an "always on" pedal. I use my guitar into amp with no pedals on sound A LOT. So I don't want any tone suck. But sometimes people find a pedal they leave on all the time and it becomes part of the tone, so if you're never going to go straight to the amp from the guitar, then it doesn't matter if they're true bypass or not, with only a few pedals.

When you usually need buffers (before and/or after your other pedals) is when you have a lot of cable run (especially in pedal patch cables). I've not found it to be an issue with george Ls. And remember, they used those big long coily cables in the old days

Some favorites that seem to consistently pop up on other guitar forums:

Fulltone OCD (and the FullDrive)
Ibenez TS808 (often modded) and clones
Boss DS1 or OD1 (usually Keeley modded)
Klon Centaur (if you're a millionaire)
Xotic BB (or AC booster)
Barber

in addition to all the boutique of the week pedals, like the Tim and Timmy, Zen Drive, etc.

If you want a little more gain, a ProCo Rat or Big Muff Pi are good choices, and of course if you want go go Fuzz or get some vintage Colorsound or Treblebooster vibe happening, specific pedals are made for that.

I actually used a Line 6 DM4 distortion modeler, which was nice becuase you could have 4 presets of 4 different types. I used a DOD overdrive model for "barely breakup" - almost a "fat" switch, a tube screamer model for a nice bit of drive, for rhythm and "country" cleanish sounds, a Tube Driver model for "rock" distortion (think AC/DC) and a Line 6 model for heavy distortion (like Ozzy, Green Day, etc.)

A lot of the other modelling type pedals have great delays, choruses, and other effects in them (Line 6 M series for example) but I find their drives either to be lacking or need LOTS of tweaking. They do seem to handle "slight grit" or "super saturated" drive/distortion really well - it's the medium dirt that I have the most trouble dialling in. Some of these will suck tone though...

Generally, stay away from pedals under 100 bucks (98 or 99 OK) unless you're buying a cheap Boss to mod. I don't think you need to pay over 200 bucks to get a quality pedal though. Many of them are in the 150 range, give or take.

I'm not up on single pedal delays - I tend to like multi-effects for delays because I find I like to use different ones for different things. For example, I use a multi-head style delay for Apache, and a simple echo for Walk Don't Run, a tape-delay with degeneration for the lead lines in Telstar, etc. So it's nice to have different ones to choose from.

Steve

+1 to the others regarding true-bypass. Not only is it unnecessary, but it can cause issues with long cable runs. I have 11-12 pedals in my chain (depending on whether I have my loop station connected or not) and my board does not make a sound (at least, not an unwanted sound) and none of my pedals adversely affect my tone. I know people who make it a point of always having a Boss pedal in their chain even if they don't use it in order to deal with the aforementioned cable length issue. I wouldn't sweat it - use the pedals you want and don't limit yourself to true bypass ones.

But then - I'm a pedal fiend.

kind regards
Ken

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Last edited: Mar 01, 2020 09:49:02

"Not much point in a good tube amp if you're killing the dynamic responsiveness with a lot of pedals"

I usually make it a point to arrange our songs so that at least half of each set I can plug straight into my amp (1966 Super Reverb) and have just one 12ft cord between guitar and amp. (I use the Loopbone when sitting in with other groups where I need to have more pedals available immediately, the Switchbone if running dual amps)
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There's already a lot of good advice posted in this thread so I'll just add this bit of two cents.
Pedals and the use of them is an art that is defined not by each other but by the user. I've seen some pretty "bad" pedals that were made to sound wonderful by the player. I've also heard what seemed to be a really pure amp and guitar tone that came from a pedal board. Back when I was a guitar tech on the road I can remember two occasions when I walked into a rehearsal with a new guitarist, saw a huge board with many, many pedals, no loops or buffers or fancy new tech and thought "uh oh, that's going to sound dead and boring" only to be completely surprised by the player's tone.
It's all in how you arrange the pedals, the order, and how YOU use them.....
But then again, this is coming from someone who puts their Reverb Tank on top of his amp........so, don't trust me, LOL!

http://www.facebook.com/CrazyAcesMusic
http://www.youtube.com/user/crazyacesrock
http://www.reverbnation.com/crazyacesmusic

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Last edited: Mar 01, 2020 09:48:33

Thanks to everyone for the comments(i am on an iphone so respond properly soon)
I want a classic surf tone, i got the amp fully serviced last year, guitar setup is perfect.
There are some varying opinions on this subject i will just have experiment, i saw aussie surf band 'the break' last night, guitarist Martin has classic surf tone (jazzmaster with 64 fender twin)

'Surf Music Lasts Forever'