Home › Forums › Help/Technical Questions › Are EHX pedals REALLY True bypass?
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April 14, 2010 at 8:38 pm #80178SnufkinoMember
I only ask because I noticed on HCFX forums that someone had a Micro Pog with an Analog Man sticker on it, so I asked him what kind of mod was it? He replied “it’s to make it true bypass”.
So…yeah. Discuss. Is it just a higher quality bypass? I’ve noticed my Big Muff Pi has pretty crappy bypass which cuts the highs quite a bit when I’m plugged into it but playing clean, so would all EHX have the same low quality bypass or what?
April 14, 2010 at 8:42 pm #109341TheCapitalJMembermost are TB but the ones that aren’t have good buffers so i’ve heard
April 14, 2010 at 9:43 pm #109345electro-melxModeratorIt depends on the pedal, if it says it’s TB then it is, the micro pog clearly states in the manual that the dry output goes through an output buffer. I presumed that this was to keep the bypassed level the same as the dry blend… so if you switch the pedal between off and on (with the dry singal knob up full) there is no difference in sound, which makes sense to me, that way you can click a little ‘high octave’ into your clean sound without the main sound changing at all. I can’t see the advantage of having it TB at all.
All muff’s are TB these days, unless you have a really early RI which I don’t think were.
April 15, 2010 at 3:18 pm #109377RayjaysonicMemberThe ones with a 3PDT Switch are true bypass!
April 15, 2010 at 3:21 pm #109378ToonsterMemberor with 4PDT switches
(I thought those were for stereo pedals..
April 15, 2010 at 4:21 pm #109388RayjaysonicMemberTouché…..and a very good point. That will teach me to try and be a smarty pants! :doh:
April 15, 2010 at 4:32 pm #109391electro-melxModeratoryou can wire a 2pdt for true bypass too… the third pole on a 3pdt is only needed for the LED… and a lot of pedals us 3pDt switches even though they aren’t wired for TB…. in the end the type of switch isn’t a good indicator of the type of bypass.
April 16, 2010 at 9:09 pm #109117RayjaysonicMemberNow that I didn’t know.
April 17, 2010 at 2:42 am #108797electro-melxModeratorQuote:Now that I didn’t know.take a look at this true bypass looper diagram (same principle applies to the bypassing of an effect)
http://www.beavisaudio.com/techpages/PedalHacker/LooperNoLED.gif
without an LED you only need a 6 lug switch for true bypass
and this is the same thing with an led, needing a 3pdt
http://www.beavisaudio.com/techpages/PedalHacker/LooperWithLED.gif
but anyway, the point is EHX seem to use those blue 3pdt switches in all their pedals these days, regardless of the type of bypass used. If it is important to you, the easiest way is to look at the pedal’s page on the ehx site and the manual, if it is TB it will say it is, if it doesn’t state it is then it probably isn’t.
look at the ‘quick specs’ of the micropog
https://www.ehx.com/products/micro-pog
compared to the pog2
https://www.ehx.com/products/pog2
that’s the quickest way to tell.
…but I wouldn’t let that ever put me off buying something I wanted, just because something isn’t TB doesn’t mean it’s got a rubbish bypass.
April 18, 2010 at 8:36 pm #107285SnufkinoMemberQuote:…but I wouldn’t let that ever put me off buying something I wanted, just because something isn’t TB doesn’t mean it’s got a rubbish bypass.I agree, The true bypass on my Big Muff is actually way worse than the buffer on my Tech 21 Boost RVB, so I guess it’s just a case of quality regardless of the idea that only “True” bypass doesn’t colour your tone, as alot of people are led to believe.
April 18, 2010 at 10:06 pm #107265SanquiFlerbMemberthe buffer on my 89′ dod fx-72 is kind of bad, but I can live with it perfectly
September 14, 2010 at 9:38 am #111394FluffChopMemberQuote:Quote:…but I wouldn’t let that ever put me off buying something I wanted, just because something isn’t TB doesn’t mean it’s got a rubbish bypass.I agree, The true bypass on my Big Muff is actually way worse than the buffer on my Tech 21 Boost RVB, so I guess it’s just a case of quality regardless of the idea that only “True” bypass doesn’t colour your tone, as alot of people are led to believe.
Worse how? That doesn’t make any sense at all. The buffer must be noisier. If you plug the buffered pedal into a high gain device you will hear hiss coming through. I compared an MXR Flanger with a Stereo Chorus. The Flanger has a wire direct from input to output and it’s dead quiet. It’s not true bypass they call that hardwire bypass. The input to the circuit has a high impedance buffer which prevents the circuitry loading down the input and bleeding off top end. The Stereo chorus is a buffered bypass and has no direct wire from input to output. It’s as noisy as all hell put into the same post gain stage. You have to know how to test the effectiveness of the bypass before making random statements. This is how completely incorrect thinking comes out to be used as a fact by someone else. Something isn’t right about what you’re saying. I don’t think your muff is true bypass if it’s worse than a buffered pedal. If it is true bypass you might be talking about the sound when it’s on, which is a totally different story. If it’s on it’s not bypassed so it could be worse and that I could believe. Or you may be talking about the loss of treble due to not having any input buffering between a guitar cable, the pedal, and another guitar cable. In that case the buffer would improve things noticably. However, the actual quality of the bypassed signal isn’t the reason you are noticing an effect.
In my simplest setup I use a Boss NS-2 and put all the true bypass pedals into it’s send/return loop. Then you have buffering on the cable from the guitar to the pedals input, and then more buffereing from the pedal to drive the cable from the pedal to the amp. That is ALL you need and you will never get any better sound by using any other pedals with buffers over all true bypass pedals. That’s my opinion because that is a fact. It’s not a question of belief it actually is the case. It’s not open to discussion. True bypass doesn’t color your tone, that is not open for debate.
September 14, 2010 at 10:08 am #111398souljah671MemberWow…this makes me want to re-route my pedals now…wish I had a noise-gate though…
October 14, 2017 at 8:30 pm #123242gvelascoMemberQuote:The buffer must be noisier. If you plug the buffered pedal into a high gain device you will hear hiss coming through. I compared an MXR Flanger with a Stereo Chorus. The Flanger has a wire direct from input to output and it’s dead quiet. It’s not true bypass they call that hardwire bypass. The input to the circuit has a high impedance buffer which prevents the circuitry loading down the input and bleeding off top end. The Stereo chorus is a buffered bypass and has no direct wire from input to output.I don’t know the age of his pedal, but the earliest bypass circuits used a single pole double throw switch. When the input was toggled directly to the output, it was still connected to the front of the effects circuit which would still load the pickups. Some people refer to this as “true” bypass because the effects circuit is being bypassed and there is a direct connection from input to output, but obviously the tone is still impacted by the load of the bypassed circuit.
Later, they used double pole double pole switches to completely disengage the effects circuitry which does remove the load of the circuit when it’s bypassed, but some of the early DPDT switches were designed for high amperage high voltage appliances, not for audio circuits. Some of those old DPDT switches have very high capacitance themselves so even with the circuit completely disengaged they could color the tone.
I totally agree with what you’re saying with respect to well designed true bypass using high quality audio components, but there are still a lot of early pedals out there that people are THINKING are true bypass and might even be true bypass, but using low quality components and those might still suck tone.
Also, not all buffered bypass circuits are equal. A well designed buffered bypass using quality components can be a thing of beauty. I think if you compare MODERN true bypass circuits to the latest buffered bypass circuits, you might find less of a difference in tone quality. With some modern pedals like the EHX Soul Food that have an internally switchable buffered/TBP output, I think the choice of buffer vs. no buffer comes down to where the pedal is in the signal chain, the presence of other buffered pedals, active vs. passive pickups, etc, rather than the tone of the bypassed effect. I haven’t seen this demo done, but I’ll bet that you’d be hard pressed to hear a difference between the buffered output of the Soul Food and the unbuffered output in a blind A/B test if that was the only effect on the line.
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