Whats wrong here?

  • Thread starter Thread starter hthomas
  • Start date Start date
hthomas

hthomas

New member
So here is my situation. Two 10ft Lava ELC cables going from amp to board, and to guitar. All patch cables are Lava Mini ELC soldered into pancake connectors. Signal chain is guitar - Boss VP(tuner plugged into tuner out), More Pedal, Port City Sahana Boost, Jetter Gain Stage Red, - amp. My amp is a Port City Pearl. It's a straight clean up.

Plugged straight in the amp clean tone is perfect. chimey bright cleans.
When plugged into with pedals and all pedals off, It's still a good clean tone but highs get cut off. It's a pretty noticeable difference. It doesn't do it with 2 pedals in the chain but when I add more it starts to do it. I tried all the pedals. None of the pedals did it by themselves. Just when 3 or more are plugged in. Am I missing something here or is this the nature of the cable length and pedals in between my amp and guitar? it's no more than 25ft worth of cable all together.
 
Boss pedals are tone sucking monsters - they are always buffering the signal through a JFET/BJT/FET of some sort.

What you hear is capactive roll-off of high end frequencies. Change the guitar volume knob to 1M to help battle it. I actually hate the high end spikey attitude of expensive cables and prefer used/old cables or mom-pop store cables to help battle it. Mogami cables are a nice mix and sound musical without sounding harsh/spike like or on the opposite side dark/no definition to the top end.

You have a few options. Dont worry about it and just play, shorten the cable lengths, change cables, or go wireless.
 
Sounds like you need a buffer, preferably in the start of your chain. Volume pedals are very often tone suckers, and a buffer in front of them helps a lot.
 


Have a look at this video, it gives you a lot of information on buffers.
I had exactly the same problem with my pedals as all of them are true bypass - the whole signal chain had some top end loss.
Visual sound has a nice little buffer box that helped me perfectly..

http://www.visualsound.net/index.php/custom_shop/
 
there is a guy here, loop master I think. $100 gets you one of those 8 or 10 loop boxes. that way everything is either in or completely out of the signal chain.
 
also the more pedal set very slight will replace the lost highs, you just gotta play around for the right level.
 
Have in mind that a loop-master strip or similar does not do anything about the high-end loss due to long cables, it can actually make it worse by taking out any buffering you may have, so with an all true-bypass setup a buffer is a must IMO.
 
You need a buffer. 100% Invest in a good one, and it'll preserve your tone.

It will also allow you to run much longer cable lengths from your board back to your amp, with no degradation in presence or clarity.

My latest buffer discovery: the Visual Sound custom shop Puretone. 2x2" mini box, $50 beans. Sounds amazing. Super super neutral.

A lot of buffers out there that are expensive high end buffers sound brittle to me.
 
I've got the exact same issues. Gots to get me a buffer. :doh:
 
So would a buffer be used on a loop if long cables were used there also?
 
LP Freak":249zgtt4 said:
So would a buffer be used on a loop if long cables were used there also?
Click to expand...

I think if you have a buffered loop your fine. My amp I just found out recently has a buffered loop, but only the return is buffered(or maybe I'm wrong :lol: :LOL: It's a VTM ) I had my Flashback and a Hardwire tremolo pedal(true bypass) in the loop and got that dullness. So I just run my Boss tuner(it has a buffer) in the loop now. Send > Boss tuner > Tremolo(or any true bypass effect) >Flashback > Return. No problem now regardless of cable length.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top