Help with tone suck on my pedal board

thebigcheese

thebigcheese

"Hi, I'm in Delaware."
I was tracking down a weird resonance when running my McCarty into my Roadster and the source seems to be my pedal board, so I am trying to figure out how to get as close to the sound of no pedals as possible. Here is my signal chain - maybe someone has some pointers on how I might rearrange things.

Guitar -> Mogami Platinum 12' cable -> pedal board -> Mogami Platinum 12' cable -> Roadster
Pedal board (wired with George L's):
1. Fuzz Factory
2. Mastotron
3. Whammy DT
4. EP Booster (on, but set to no boost so it's just a buffer)
5. Polytune Mini
6. Dyna Comp (with true bypass)
7. Soundblox 2 Multiwave Distortion
8. Vortex Flanger (set to buffered bypass)

The Fuzz Factory is first because it gets cranky with anything before it. The next two just happen to fit well on the board in that order, otherwise I would probably do the EP Booster next. The EP is only meant as a buffer with a bit of a brightness boost. Everything else is pretty much just in the order it fit on my pedal board (well, and what made sense from an FX order standpoint). I have been experimenting with swapping the EP Booster and the Mastotron, but that doesn't seem to make any difference. I am trying to avoid buying a switching system, especially when everything on the board is or can be true bypass anyway. I feel like it must have something to do with all the cabling, but George L's are supposed to be high quality, so I don't know. What I am noticing is a bit less brightness and an ugly resonance that I can't EQ out on the amp somewhere in the upper mids (probably as a result of the treble roll-off). Any suggestions?
 
Do you really need 3 fuzz pedals? Disconnect all of your pedals then add them in one by one [in the correct order this time] until you find the pedal/pedals that suck.
If it was my pedalboard I'd ditch the Fuzz Factory, EP Booster, and Soundblox and try:

1. Polytune Mini
2. Dyna Comp
3. Mastotron
4. Whammy
5. Flanger
 
The Soundblox isn't really a fuzz, and I primarily use the Fuzz Factory. The Mastotron is in no way essential, though it cooperates better with buffers in front of it. I don't really use the Soundblox either, but I like both of those pedals, so it seemed like I might as well have them there. I think leaving the buffer until the end is part of the problem, so what I am trying for now is EP Booster first. That seems to work better than where it was, though I lose some of the low end from the Fuzz Factory (and gain some definition in exchange). For the song where I use the Fuzz Factory, it wouldn't be any problem to also switch off the EP Booster, though, so this could work alright. I'd hate to have to take anything off - this seems like the perfect assortment of pedals to cover most of my needs. Crazy fuzz, Fuzz Facey fuzz, dropped tunings and pitch shifting, compression, synthy distortions, and flange/chorusy sounds.
 
If there was one thing I learned from my instant love of shoegaze music, it was that such an amount of pedals is going to suck your tone. Some of it may be because of specific pedals, but all in all a long circuit DOES SUCK TONE. I had to ditch quite a few pedals before having an acceptable level of treble. And of course, for such a long chain you're going to want to look for True Bypass-pedals, although they too suck tone.
 
dainbramage said:
If there was one thing I learned from my instant love of shoegaze music, it was that such an amount of pedals is going to suck your tone. Some of it may be because of specific pedals, but all in all a long circuit DOES SUCK TONE. I had to ditch quite a few pedals before having an acceptable level of treble. And of course, for such a long chain you're going to want to look for True Bypass-pedals, although they too suck tone.
Click to expand...
first ..... I would read up on true bypass vs buffered bypass. It's simply not true that you want all your pedals to be true bypass. You need a buffer or two in the circuit. I see you have one but where it is in the circuit makes a difference so the first thing I'd do is move that booster around and see if it can help.
It might do best for that purpose at the end of the chain.

Personally I never worry about tone suck unless I have a pedal that's very bad about it.
For instance, I have a GFS delay that's a big tone sucker ..... it's way obvious so I don't use it in my board.

But as for the bit of treble loss you get with a string of pedals ... I just compensate with the amp's tone controls.

To give you perspective my main live board is:
Zoom Analog Powerdrive >
TS 808 >
Fulldrive 2 >
E.H. Electric Mistress >
VooDoo Labs Micro-Vibe >
TSU-2 >
Hall of Fame Reverb >
Akai Headrush ... to amp.
That's a decent amount of pedals and I don't have a problem with tone suck.
 
Fuzzes need to be early in the chain or preceded by a buffer to keep the impedance high. If your fuzzes are all in a row, or pretty far from the buffers, you'll lose some there.

Also, how are you powering all of this? A one-spot or something like that will lose tone. A good isolated power supply may help if you're not already using one. You don't have so many pedals that there should be a problem.
 
I'm using a Pedal Power 2+. I try not to skimp on my gear :)
I think the EP Booster at the front of the chain and the Vortex buffering at the end is getting me to an acceptable level of tone loss. I guess there's no real way to have both lots of fun pedals and no tone suck...
 
yeah to some extent there will usually be some high end loss.

for recording i unhook the pedals and only run what i need for each track. it minimizes the suck (my playing though maximizes the suck). For live a little tone loss won't be noticed by almost anyone.
 
Re: tone suck

I for one would check your power supplies match the pedals if you did not have this issue in the past. I run a Boss NS-2 and a power conditioner so things are not out of control. Any digital pedals can be the source, pointing at the Soundblox, if you really need that thing get a digital voodoo labs power source and put it and any other digital pedals "strictly" on that device and no others. :yawn: bedtime for me
 
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