Straight in sound, but with pedals

[soundbee]

I've got a Dirty Shirley combo and a Smallbox combo. Nothing beats the sound and feel of plugging the guitar straight into these amps. However, I like to play with a few pedals (wah, phaser, analog delay, etc...) in front. I've tried true bypass and various buffers, but nothing really gets me there. Even Radial buffers with the drag control (to me the signal sounds a bit weaker than unity). Any suggestions or is it really just a case of "you can't have yer cake and eat it too"?

Or should I just "man up" and plug into the amp and forget about those pedals in the front?

WWDD? (What Would Dave Do?)

 

[RACKSYSTEMS]

With a combination of the right buffer and tru bypass you should be able to get the tone. Everything you put in front changes it some though. What have you tried?

 

[glassjaw7]

What Dave said, OR - If you're only using a few pedals, just get a bypass switcher from American loopers or Loopmaster, Walrus, Boss, etc. The pedals will be out of the signal path when you are not using them. Of course, the switcher/looper itself will be in the path but its effect on your tone will be very minimal if noticeable at all.

One of these would work:

http://www.loop-master.com/looper-wtune ... iu7n6bsd44

http://www.americanloopers.com/collecti ... ur-4-loops

https://www.walrusaudio.com/collections ... 9900871491

Maybe Dave has plans to build his own at some point??

 

[soundbee]

I think it's also a matter of having a "longer" cable. It seems even with one pedal and 42+ feet of cable in total, it sounds different that just one 21ft cable (using Monster "Rock") cables. I've tried a bunch of things...

As far as buffered pedals go
- Radial Elevator (this came the closest imho, with some drag and the "off" with a slight gain added)
- Radial Stagebug
... with the Radial units, unity seemed to be a bit less than "unity" and they need a bit of umph to get back up - only 1 or 2db it seems.
- TS-9
- Boss pedals
- Strymon El Cap (trails mode)
- Tonal Recall (trails mode)
- KTR
- Supa-Trem
... various other buffers

Varied luck with using a drive pedal to "get back to" what I think is the direct sound (with shorter cable)
- OCD
- KTR
- Peacekeeper (finding this to be able to dial in the closest)

... of course I'm really splitting hairs here to get those last bits of goodness... but to me there's a great feel when jacked directly into the amp. It's sort of a "pop" under the pick and fingers, which diminishes with longer cables. Maybe this is really just a cable quality / length issue...?