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Re: DIY Patch Cables
Posted: Tue Mar 12, 2019 8:53 am
by AiRdAd
I've never really gone down the route of expensive patch cables. I bought a two really nice leads off Ryan, and use them with my pedalboard. I notice I lose top end going through my pedalboard - but the top end comes back when I switch on the buffer.
Grant, have you experimented with a buffer. You could see how close using the buffer gets you to your 'plugged straight in' tone, and then decide if the better cables are needed?
Re: DIY Patch Cables
Posted: Tue Mar 12, 2019 8:59 am
by Single coil
jeremyb wrote:high capacitance caused by using long cables kills the top end
Re: DIY Patch Cables
Posted: Tue Mar 12, 2019 9:20 pm
by SimonHirst
I did an experiment regarding how much tone-suck there was through my board a few months back. It was very interesting. I run what I'd call a pedalboard on the larger side of things, 12 pedals all up, and mostly oldish buffered stompboxes, so assumed there would be a fair bit of loss. However, I'm pretty fussy with my guitar sound and it hadn't been too obviously affected to my ears. So in the studio one day I A/B'd direct into the amp, and through my board into the amp.
My second to last pedal is the Catalinbread Talisman reverb which has a control named 'volume'. Turned right down, there was an obvious drop in volume compared to straight into the amp, and there was some high end loss to my ears. However, (this is the kicker!) and I haven't researched this, but I'm wondering if that control allows more high Freq's to pass through as you turn it up. I don't know for sure, but that's certainly the impression I got. Once I matched up the volumes so they were roughly at unity (bringing the volume control up on the Talisman to compensate for the loss through the pedalboard), there was barely a difference in the end audio. I even used a Freq analyser plugin in Pro Tools to check my ears weren't decieving me. I was very surprised, but it showed me that, if set up well, the results in a board like this can be almost negligible. Although without that control on the Catalinbread pedal it would be a much different story!
Re: DIY Patch Cables
Posted: Tue Mar 12, 2019 9:31 pm
by JHorner
^^^^^
This is why I so often ended up with a boost/line driver at the end of the board and currently have my FD3 setup for OD then boost, so that at the end of the chain... is a buffered volume control...
Re: DIY Patch Cables
Posted: Tue Mar 12, 2019 9:57 pm
by SimonHirst
JHorner wrote:^^^^^
This is why I so often ended up with a boost/line driver at the end of the board and currently have my FD3 setup for OD then boost, so that at the end of the chain... is a buffered volume control...
Yeah, I found it very interesting. So much is made of the whole 'tone-suck' thing, often rightfully so, but I was surprised at how very close the different signals were after some careful thought, and a bit of luck I guess at how these particular pedals work together.
And this is not to disregard, or belittle switchers either. I've used them in the past, and have been looking at getting another (hence this experiment in one aspect), but I'm a bit on the fence. Although, I was looking at going back because, as the singer, I can program patches and push one foot switch to change everything, instead of the small tap-dance routines.
Re: DIY Patch Cables
Posted: Wed Mar 13, 2019 7:35 am
by jeremyb
Fan of buffers here, I put my TU-3 after my way, fuzz, and drive pedals to keep the signal strong before it gets to the comp, delay, and amp, seems to do the trick, and doesn't mess with the fuzz
Re: DIY Patch Cables
Posted: Wed Mar 13, 2019 7:41 am
by Single coil
No such thing as tone suck, but bad input impedance (old mechanical bypass, “hardwire” bypass pedals) and attenuation (long cables with not enough juice to keep top end) are a thing.
People rubbishing buffers, especially boss pedals, just absolutely does my head in.
Bonus round: buffered pedals don’t pop and click when you turn them on and off.
/rant
Re: DIY Patch Cables
Posted: Wed Mar 13, 2019 8:05 am
by kwhelan
yeah I think its totally going to depend on the pedals used, old analogue pedals when on , physics would say you can't undo the filtering etc of the signal by capacitors etc inside the pedal so a string of pedals has to have an effect , you can reamplify the levels but I can't see how you can re-add the frequencies. Alot of pedals do have a blend of effected and uneffected sound so there is also some original signal passing through .Digital is another matter entirely and maybe the amp is actually filtering out alot of those frequencies before they get through to the speaker anyway. I t would be interesting to see the outputs compared direct into a board as opposed to an amp as the amps have their own independant characteristics so a pedal board will react differently in front of different amps
Re: DIY Patch Cables
Posted: Wed Mar 13, 2019 8:13 am
by SimonHirst
Single coil wrote:
People rubbishing buffers, especially boss pedals, just absolutely does my head in.
Bonus round: buffered pedals don’t pop and click when you turn them on and off.
/rant
Haha, absolutely! I find the lack of pop/click very pleasing too.
Re: DIY Patch Cables
Posted: Wed Mar 13, 2019 8:20 am
by GrantB
Ended up having oodles of old thinner George L cable so just used that with the low profile ends from JayCar. Photo's to follow. Sounds great and amazingly, everything worked from the get go.
I'm using the new Warwick RockBoard Tres w/Modul 2 from the RS. Easy to use.
Re: DIY Patch Cables
Posted: Wed Mar 13, 2019 8:23 am
by SimonHirst
kwhelan wrote:yeah I think its totally going to depend on the pedals used, old analogue pedals when on , physics would say you can't undo the filtering etc of the signal by capacitors etc inside the pedal so a string of pedals has to have an effect , you can reamplify the levels but I can't see how you can re-add the frequencies.
Yes, this is what I assumed too. I don't know the technical stuff of these things, but according to my ears, and more importantly the Freq analysis it came out very, very close. Perhaps it is just dumb luck with what pedals I'm using and how much that Catalinbread pedal seems to level things up , which results in it being so similar. I might look up how that control works.
Re: DIY Patch Cables
Posted: Wed Mar 13, 2019 9:26 am
by jeremyb
I'm using the new boss ones, making them is a little hit and miss, but I think I've got it down pat now, just waiting on a couple of more pedals to come before I post a pic...
Re: DIY Patch Cables
Posted: Wed Mar 13, 2019 11:02 am
by GrantB
jeremyb wrote:I'm using the new boss ones, making them is a little hit and miss, but I think I've got it down pat now, just waiting on a couple of more pedals to come before I post a pic...
Are these at a right angle or straight out?
Re: DIY Patch Cables
Posted: Wed Mar 13, 2019 11:10 am
by Terexgeek
GrantB wrote:jeremyb wrote:I'm using the new boss ones, making them is a little hit and miss, but I think I've got it down pat now, just waiting on a couple of more pedals to come before I post a pic...
Are these at a
right angle or straight out?
Oh c'mon, it's JB, can't we at least refer to them as bent?
Re: DIY Patch Cables
Posted: Wed Mar 13, 2019 11:54 am
by jeremyb
GrantB wrote:jeremyb wrote:I'm using the new boss ones, making them is a little hit and miss, but I think I've got it down pat now, just waiting on a couple of more pedals to come before I post a pic...
Are these at a right angle or straight out?
You can do either with the one plug! It's quite a nice design in that way, there's just a slot which the cable bends into if you want right angle