I don’t have a 720. I have the 360 and I haven’t had any problems with it, but the 720 is a different circuit.

Digital boxes seem to be more susceptible to interference from things like wireless routers, cable modems, ASL modems, fiber optic modems, ‘puters…that kind of thing. In other words, other digital stuff. I know it’s a hassle, but can you try putting your 720 on something longer than a patch cord and try re-orienting it…moving it around the room, changing the diretion it faces. Move it closer to and farther away from things that might be causing interference like those thing I mentioned? Also, do you have LED or fluorescent lights in your room? Can you try moving your 720 to and away from your LED or fluorescent lights? Use the 720 like a geiger counter and let us know if you can find something that it seems to be picking up noise from.

Are you able to go into secondary mode and adjust the amount of detuning? Try this.

1. Select Shimmer.

2. Put “LEVEL” at 12:00 to blend in the original sound and the effect.

3. Select the shortest “DELAY” and the least “FEEDBACK”, that is all the way counterclockwise on both. This will eliminate confusion of the sound cause by the repeats.

4. Press and hold the “TAP DIVIDE” button to go into Secondary mode. You should see the light start flashing.

5. Turn the “DELAY” knob to the right a bit, then all the way to the left again to set the amount of shimmer to a minimum.

6. Turn the “FEEDBACK” knob to the right a bit, then all the way to the left again. Now start turning the “FEEDBACK” knob while playing to see if it’s affecting the detuning. All the way to the left should be no detuning. All the way to the right should be a fairly deep detuning. You can’t change the rate of the oscillation. You can only change the depth of the oscillation.

Is the FEEDBACK knob having ANY effect in Secondary mode?

I have almost exclusively EHX pedals. Here’s my most common chain:

Guitar -> MXR Noise Gate / Line Driver -> EHX Tone Corset -> Cry Baby Fuzz Wah -> EHX Nano Big Muff -> EHX Germanium 4 Big Muff -> EHX Small Stone Nano -> EHX Memory Toy -> EHX Canyon Delay -> EHX Holy Grail Nano -> EHX Nano Looper 360 -> Hawk Ltd. Tonal Expander II -> Fender Excelsior Amp

I power them all from a single LiveWire power supply. LiveWire is Guitar Center’s house brand. In other words it’s the cheapest, and the outputs are not isolated. I have very little noise in the line. Most comes from the guitar pickups which is why I put the noise gate at the very beginning. It MIGHT have to do with the fact that I have only two, sometimes three, digital pedals in my chain.

Please list the specific pedals you’re using – brand and pedal.

I haven’t found EHX effects to be particularly noisy compared to other effects. And I don’t think the voltage of the EHX adaptors has anything to do with it. The adapter might be 9.6 volts, but the effect will draw whatever it needs. Batteries vary in voltage over their life. Effects are designed to operate within a range of voltages. The reason you don’t get noise when you use their dedicated adaptors is because they are isolated. They are also isolated when you use batteries In fact, batteries is THE BEST way to isolate your effects, but it is a hassle. The better the isolation in your multi-effect power unit, the less noisy all of the effects will be. I have noticed that effects from the same manufacturer tend to play well with each other. Let’s say you have just DOD and EHX and nothing else. You MIGHT get better results having all of your DOD on one power supply and all of your EHX on another power supply.

You should test adding your effects one at a time to the power supply chain and see when you start getting noise. In my case, I noticed it was when I added a particular non-EHX effect to my mostly EHX effects chain.

Which power supply are you using? Which effects? What is the order? Have you tested with batteries vs. power supply to try to find the culprit?

The guys at EHX really did their homework, as usual.

The Soul Food pedal is essentially EHX’ Klon Centaur clone. There are many Centaur clones, but I think EHX’ is the best.

The Centaur had many unique features. The Centaur circuit is very different from anything else being done at the time. The main goal of the original circuit seems to be the ability to blend in some of the clean signal with some of the overdriven signal to preserve transparency and to make it play nice with an amp’s front end.

Another very important feature was a voltage converter that drove the op amps at 18 volts. This changes their response to dynamics.

The Centaur had buffered bypass and this was not selectable. This seems to be a side effect or byproduct of the way the circuit is designed to always blend in some of the clean signal. Many users of the original Centaur report that they like the sound of the Centaur when engaged, but HATE what it does to the sound when bypassed.

So, that brings us to the Soul Food. The Soul Food simulates the Centaur circuit VERY closely. One notable difference is that the original circuit used germanium diodes and the Soul Food uses silicon diodes. I’ve seen a very detailed Soul Food mod that allows you to switch between germanium and silicon and in the end the author writes that the difference in tone is EXTREMELY subtle and probably not worth the effort.

The Soul Food also uses a voltage converter and runs the op amps at 18 volts. So, we’re good there.

That leaves your original question. What’s the benefit of a buffer? Why make it switchable? EHX was making a Centaur clone. One of the features of the Centaur was a buffered bypass. Some people LIKE what it does to their signal chain. That’s most likely because of the way buffers interacted with vintage effects. Some vintage wah or volume pedals interacted horribly with distortions placed after them and required a buffer. So, if you’re a “distortion after the wah” kind of guy and you’re using a vintage wah circuit, you might actually NEED a buffer between the wah and the distortion.

EHX realized that many people don’t need and/or want that now because of modern pedal designs, so they made it switchable in their pedal. This might actually make the EHX a better Centaur than the Klon for many people. Add to that the fact that you can buy a new EHX Soul Food for about 1/25th of what you might pay for an original Klon Centaur and you have quite a deal.

I second this request.