Remember, as true bypass pedals do not enhance the signal, if your signal is weak going to a true bypass effect, you won’t get the best out of it. This way you have a strong signal passing from your guitar to pedals and eventually to your amp aided by a buffer.
Feel free to buy whatever pedal you want, and throw whatever you want on your board, both true bypass and buffered, and if you want to be sure the signal is strong just add a final buffered pedal at the end. If you only place a buffer at the end, you’re pushing a degraded signal, so it’s best to place one at the start as the signal is purer.
It's a good idea to arrange your pedalboard with a buffered pedal at the start of the chain as this takes your tone from the guitar and strengthens it before it gets to your pedals.Īs most guitarists put a tuner at the start of the chain (from guitar to tuner), we’d definitely recommend the industry standard BOSS TU-3 tuner as this will inevitably boost the signal and help push the signal to the amp. You can enjoy good tone, and an array of excellent effects using a combination of true bypass and buffered, the key is just making sure you have at least one buffered pedal on your board and making sure you’re not using cheap knock-off pedals with inferior parts. Not every pedal is true bypass and not all pedals are buffered, so unless you only want one type of brand on your pedalboard, you’re best off mixing and matching pedals with a combination of buffered and true bypass pedals. If we can give you any advice it would be to mix and match your pedals, and above all, invest in good quality guitar leads at all times. But how do we get around this tone drain if we want longer cables? And how will this affect true bypass or buffered pedals? Well, to be more exact the length of your cable matters.
The fact of the matter is: the longer the cable, the more it affects your tone.Īs most guitarists who gig or play live use anything from 10 to 20 ft cables and longer, you might find that there's a drain your tone and dilution of the signal.Īs most of us will be using anywhere from 2 to 8 pedals on your board, that’s at least an extra 6 or so feet of cable - which will dilute it even further. This is down to the fact that the signal has to travel further and is called capacitance. When you plug your guitar or bass straight into your amplifier without any pedals, and with a good quality cable that is less than 15ft, you’ll be getting a strong signal that accurately represents how your guitar is interacting with the amp.Īs the guitar is a high impedance device, when you extend the length of the cable over 18.5 ft you’ll automatically start to get degradation of sound and dilute your signal. Before we delve into whether or not true bypass pedals are better than buffered, or whether buffered pedals colour your tone, we need to understand the signal path and how pedals, and more importantly the size your cables affect the overall sound.