True Bypass Pedals VS Buffered Pedals?

---

Here is a typical question we have been asked many times “Since true bypass is touted as such a prestigious feature by so many pedal manufacturers, Shouldn’t I assume that it is better than non-true by pass pedals? And Shouldn’t I assume that my signal will be unaffected, clear and pristine if I use only True bypass pedals? Well, no, you should not.

To grasp an easy understanding, consider this; your guitar signal is high impedance and what that means is that as your guitar signal travels through a cable that it will begin to degrade after a length of about 16-18 feet, with or without pedals in your signal path! This is usually evident in a drop off of high frequencies. A simple test you can do yourself is to compare your guitar straight to your amp (no pedals) with a 6ft cable then compare with a 20ft cable, you should be able to hear a difference. This is because the capacitance load increases as the cable length increases. Thus, less cable, better signal.
Now consider this, every time you add a pedal and patch cable to your signal path you are increasing the distance your signal travels, so in this case, true by pass or not, your signal suffers. With just 4 pedals using  6”- patch cables you have added 18” of cable or 3 feet with 8 pedals!

This can be combated two ways, if you do own all true bypass pedals, you can add a buffer that will boost and restore your signal. The ModTone MT-SB Signal booster which offers other benefits would be a great choice. Some pedals (like Boss) which aren’t true bypass, have built in buffers that boost the signal automatically. A point to make here however are that not pedals, true bypass or other, are created equal.  There are of course other factors that can affect your signal. The quality of the effects used for instance. It has also been my personal observation that some pedals of seemingly equal quality and features work better than others in my signal chain. Some pedals seem to "like" each other" some dont. For this reason I do not take anything for granted involving my signal. I have found that only by careful selection and trial and error could I have arrived at my current pedal line up which consist of both true by-pass and non-true bypass pedals. Ultimately our best advice is, test some gear and trust your ear.