One of these years, I need to make it down to NAMM, I think it would be super fun. This year’s summer NAMM featured a new pedal that will be coming out in the Fall of 2010 called the Keymaster by Pigtronix. In a nutshell, it’s a dual true bypass effects loop in a pedal. It’s pretty cool with the ability to handle multiple inputs (XLRs, balanced, unbalanced, etc). Where I think it really stands out is the ability to run the effects in series or parallel. In parallel, they’re running at the same time, but you can fade into each other or blend. Pretty cool.

Here is a video that Blake from What’s The Dude Play posted featuring Dave Koltai introducing the Keymaster. “It’s the Keymaster.. it get’s anything done”. Billy Mays would be proud. You can read Blake’s post here.

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Over the weekend I found myself working on a fun project. I’ve been slowly chipping away on my pedal board and one item I wanted to introduce was a bypass loop strip.  I wanted this for several reasons.

- To isolate my pedals and remove them from the signal chain while not being used
- Create chained effects and activate those effects with one switch
- Create a loop for my delay

Now, I already use a Boss LS-2 for my primary lead loop which consists of Holy Fire Overdrive and Ibanez TS9 Tube Screamer, but I really wanted a loop for my Line 6 DL 4. I’ve been working on a few songs where I want to turn the delay on and off, but I loose my tempo when I do so, with this in a loop I can maintain the tempo I set throughout the song and pull it in or out.

There are lots of loop strips out there, but I wanted to see if I could build one. It was somewhat challenging to understand how the 3PDT switches work in relationship to the signal paths, and there is a lot of soldering involved, but overall, it was a easy project.

For those of you that might be interested, I documented my steps, and I’ll supply my part list for building the 5 loop strip. First though, I have to thank SingleCoil.com for writing a great article on this very subject. I used their diagram for this project and is a great resource to understand how this all works. Please check out their website. I’d also like Matt from Cheese Blocks Effects for taking a look at my project (via email) and offering some suggestions for the next build.

Okay… now to the build. First off, let’s start with a part list. I ordered everything from PedalPartsPlus.com.

1 1411TU Looper Enclosure
1 Switchcraft 1/4″ Stereo Jack #12B (I would probably not order this again and just go with 12 monos)
11 Switchcraft 1/4″ Mono Jack #11
1 DC Power Jack
5 Red LEDs (5mm)
5 5mm LED Bezels
5 Xicon 1/4watt 1* Metal Film Resistors 470 ohms
5 (CLIFF) RoHS 3PDT True Bypass Switches
#24/7 Green Wire
#24/7 Red Wire
#24/7 White Wire
#24/7 Black Wire

Tools you’ll need: wrenches, screwdriver, soldering iron, wire strippers, wire cutters, solder (I used 60/40 rosin-core .032 dia) and needle nosed plyers. It’s incredibly nice to have the ’3rd set of hands’ alligator clips deal for soldering. Also a nice pair of wire strippers makes things easier.

This is what it looks like when I got the package. Note in this photo I have 5 560k resistors. I did not need to use those.

Next, I loosely inserted the jacks and switches. I locked in the LED bezels. I say loosely added them, because you’ll be pulling them out again. I basically put them into position so I could measure the wire lengths needed. I wanted to make sure I could open the enclosure if there was a problem. Also this enclosure is pretty tight for soldering.

Next, I thought I would work on the switches. In the diagram I was using you needed to make a ground jumper from bottom left to middle right.  I first soldered the resistors for the LEDs and clipped the remaining unused lead tail and used that as the jumper and soldered that in place. I was using this diagram from SingleCoil.com (http://www.singlecoil.com/tb-strip/dia3.html).

I then started on the ground connections. Linking all the mono jacks and linking the send/receive pairs back to the the switches, as well as linking those to the master input and output of the strip. It’s important to understand the jacks and what lugs are what. Mono jacks only have ‘tip’ and ‘sleeve’.  Stereo jacks have tip, ring and sleeve. The sleeve will be the ground and the tip will be your signal from the guitar. The lug (what you’re soldering to) is opposite of the tip or opposite of the sleeve. For this strip, you should be using all mono jacks since it’ll be DC powered and we don’t need to activate the current with the input jack like most pedals. For this project, I accidentally wired the signal to the sleeve of the stereo jack instead of the tip. Here is a good diagram that I was using illustrating a jack and it’s lugs: http://skyturtle.com/2009/02/17/stereo-phone-jack/

From here, I started to wire the send and returns of the effect loops as well as the DC jack.

All that is left is to connect the LEDs to the resistors and to chain the positives together. Matt from Cheese Blocks recommended that I should have used heat shrink tubing on those leads, and I definitely thought about it. In the future I’ll definitely add that to help prevent any shorts. For this project I made sure that the leads were bent up towards the lid and away from the switches as best as I could, but that little bit of shorting prevention could go a long way.

One thing that I would recommend is to make sure you clip any excess leads from wires and components, especially at the jack lugs. These jacks are very close together and could be another area of potential short circuits. Make sure you use a hot soldering iron and to focus on clean joints.

When she was all done (and after I fought the ‘sleeve’ issue with the master input) it was time to test it out. All the loops worked and everything sounded great. Here is shot of it on my board for initial testing:

Hope this comes in handy. I’ll be making another one here shortly, like to add a few more items in there.. master on/off switch, tuner out.. maybe even play with a buffered loop.

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A few months ago I was very interested in buffers and how they can help your tone when your cables are long and you have many true-bypass pedals on the line. Basically, you create a capacitor which “muddies” your tone. By adding a buffer in there, you address this problem. There are a few pedals out there that have buffers in them, etc.

Tonight, I came across a cool install gadget by Creation Audio Labs called the Redeemer Circuit which looks to add a buffer to your input jack. Cool concept to avoid any signal issues by addressing the source vs. the line. Seems like a simple install as well.

Here is the official description:

The Redeemer is an innovative buffer circuit that eliminates tone loss caused by the interaction of instrument electronics and the loading effect of the cable, effects units and amplifier. The instrument is effectively insulated from the rest of the signal chain providing these benefits:

IMPROVED NOTE CLARITY
Individual notes within chords are heard with greater detail – harmonics jump right out!

QUICKER TRANSIENT ATTACK
The guitar becomes very responsive to the players picking velocity and strength… This is something you will feel!

ULTRA LINEAR AND TRANSPARENT
The timbre of the instrument stays consistent, especially when “rolling back” the volume controls! No loss of high frequencies when you turn down your instruments volume – It’s like having a master volume that keeps your tone the same at any volume level.

PLUG DIRECTLY INTO THE LINE INPUT ON A MIXER
Because the output impedance is less than 300ohms the circuit can easily drive a line input for going direct to a mixer.
This results in a clear, full range of tone that sounds better than using a direct box for live or recording applications.

Here is  a video by CreationAudioLabs:

Anyone have any personal experience with this? Looks like they’re selling it for $49.00, at their official store.

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Yesterday, I posted a review of the Boss TU-2 Tuner which I mentioned had buffered bypass. Eric commented and provided a fantastic link to a article by R.G. Keen which works at Visual Sound Pedals. My post about Visual Sound’s Route 808 pedal is what started my tangent / interest in buffered bypass.

Here is a great explanation of the differences between True Bypass and Buffered Bypass:

Once guitarists noticed that their CLEAN sound suffered from having a bypassed effect in the line, they demanded better bypasses. This came in two flavors, true bypass and buffered bypass.

Buffered bypass is the technique of designing a high input impedance amplifier to go ahead of the actual effect circuitry. The input impedance of this buffer is high enough to avoid tone sucking, and it has an output impedance low enough to drive the rest of the effect with no loading even if the effect proper has a low input impedance. This also allowed electronic switching from dry to effected signals, and became a favorite of several Japanese electronic companies. The best example is probably the Ibanez xx-9 series, which includes the fabled Tube Screamer 808 and 9. These effects do not get a lot of reports of tone sucking, although purists sometimes demand that they be converted to true bypass.

True bypass is the standard of clean signal quality against which all other bypasses are measured. True bypass means that when the bypass switch is in the bypass position, the effect circuit is entirely disconnected, input and output, from the guitar’s signal, and that the signal passes from the effect input to its output going only through wire and switch contacts. To see how a true bypass works, we can make up a hypothetical set of single pole, single throw (also know as simple make/break) switches and concoct a true bypass. For this, we only need three simple switches and some timing. Clearly we need two switches to break the path from the input jack to the effect input and from the effect output to the output jack. If these two are simultaneously opened or closed, they connect or disconnect the effect from the jacks.

I’m going to do some personal experiments with true bypassing and adding a buffered item in line. I’ve been so use to my tone, that I need to shake things up a bit and see I hear a difference with my current set up. Or at the very least, if I can replicate a complete true-bypass signal path to see if things darken.

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I picked up the Boss TU-2 Chromatic Stomp Box Tuner about 10 years ago. Prior to that, I owned a series of digital tuners that I would include with a various looper pedals to keep the tuning on the ground. I remember how much I appreciated the quality and effectiveness of the Boss Tu-2 tuner immediately.

It is incredibly easy to view under various types of stage lighting and conditions, and is versatile in the sense that you can use it as a kill switch or mute while switching guitars, etc. It can also be used a power supply to power up your other pedals via daisy chain power cable.

Here are the official features for this pedal from Boss.

• BOSS world-renowned TU-Series tuner accuracy in a convenient stompbox design
• Mute/Bypass select for silent tuning with a single stomp
• 11-point LED indicators and new “stream” meter display tuning discrepancy via speed and direction of LEDs (speed of LED movement gets slower as pitch becomes more accurate)
• 7-segment LED displays string and note names, easily visible on dark stages
• Seven easy tuning modes include Chromatic, Guitar Regular, Guitar Flat, Guitar Double Flat, Bass Regular, Bass Flat, Bass Double Flat
• Tuning mode setting and display style choice stored in memory
• Adjustable reference pitch from 438 to 445Hz
• 8-octave tuning range—the widest in its class
• Footswitchable Tuner Off mode preserves battery life by disabling LEDs

Now, if you’ve been following this blog, and you haven’t please do (you can follow me by subscribing to our RSS and receive updates via email or follow me on Twitter), you’ll remember a post a few days ago where I discuss buffered bypass. Many of the pedals today are true-bypass, and that is always listed as a ‘feature’ of the pedal, but if you’re signal has nothing but true-bypass, you could be experiencing some potential tone issues.

I’m still trying to put the pieces together and there is a lot of debate and discussion out there on the topic, but by having a completely true-bypass line, you’ll be converting your cables into capacitors, basically darkening your tone due to the length of the signal path. One way to correct this is by adding a couple of buffered bypass items in the chain to alter the impedance of the guitar signal.

I’m mentioning this because the Boss TU-2 has buffered input/output stages to achieve this. If you have many pedals and good cable length, you might want to try to add the pedal as the first thing or last thing depending cable lengths and number of pedals, etc. Some guys like to have a buffer at the front and the end of their line.

Bottom line, the Boss TU-2 Chromatic Stomp Box Pedal is a must-have for any guitarist pedal board out there. They’re built to last and just plain work.. forever. I’ve had mine for 10 years now and it works like the day I got it with countless stomps on it.

You can pick up the TU-2 at Musician’s Friend for $99.

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Lastnight’s band practice we had our general gear tear-down, which always leads to gear talk. The interesting topic lastnight was about true bypass vs. buffered bypass. Many of the pedals promote they offer true bypass, and there are various loopers/switches that indicate buffered.  I wanted to learn more about this, and specifically about cable impedance and how it can dull your tone with true bypass pedals in your line.

So this morning, I started searching for some sound clips or videos related to the subject, and I came across this great video by Visual Sound that clearly describes the differences.

As you can see and hear that the buffered bypass provided a brighter tone vs. the true bypass pedal. It totally makes sense that the amount of cables (guitar to pedal and pedal to amp) can add large amount of capacitance to the signal.

I wasn’t too familiar with the Visual Sound stuff, and noticed that it was a Route 808 pedal in that demo. Since I just recently wrote a post about the TS9 which included a TS808 in there, I wanted to learn more, and found another video by Visual Sound (same demo) but a shoot out between the following pedals (TS808 TS original, Klon Centaur, Keeley Mod’d TS9, Fulltone Fulldrive 2 MosFet, Visual Sound Route 808). I thought how they did the shoot out was great, played the same piece, each pedal configured to be generally the same tone settings and drive.

I was quite impressed with the video. You can pick up a Visual Sound Route 808 on Musician’s Friend for $99.95 (list price is $148.00.. so that’s a 32% savings over list).

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