NOT ALL BUFFERS ARE CREATED EQUALLY. I can’t tell you how many times someone has said to me, “I have a XYZ buffer-bypass pedal so I’m all set for buffers on my pedalboard”. The truth is 99.9% of buffers out there, even from the brands you may like, are inferior buffers.
Most of these buffers in the marketplace are made by individuals that don’t fully understand the conditions of the pedalboard and the impact of multiple impedance changes, large amounts of capacitance from guitar cables, 1/4” connectors, and the circuitry in each pedal that connects the input/output jacks to the footswitches.
By definition, a buffer should have no EQ, no compression, no distortion/clipping, and be 100% neutral even in the worst of conditions. A quality buffer should be able to represent the sound of your guitar, with a 10ft. cable into your amp, even when driving 100 feet of cable after the buffer.
However, most buffers will color the sound even with 10ft. of standard guitar cable after it, and it gets worse from there with more cable (capacitance) seen on the output of the buffer.
To demonstrate this, we’ve set up a test rig with a The Gig Rig QMX true bypass looper, using a Klon Centaur, Boss DC-2W, Ibanez TS-9, and Vertex Buffer Interface all in individual loops, in addition to 40 feet of Mogami 2314 (a representation of what we might see in a typical rig in terms of cable capacitance, 1/4” plugs, inner-wiring in the pedals, in addition to the output cable back to the amplifier). We’ll demonstrate a baseline reference by playing the guitar with a 10ft. cable directly into the amplifier (with no buffer) to calibrate what the goal should be for the buffers to re-create. Then, we’ll select each of these buffers (one-by-one) to hear how well they drive 40 feet of cable (playing the same riff through the same guitar and amp) and let you evaluate which buffer represents the reference sound most accurately.
#bufferpedal #guitarbuffer #vertexeffects
11 мар 2024
