Building an octa-switch... Need to talk buffer...

[greysun]

Okay, I know I know... Buffer is normally something that gets rocks thrown at people on these boards, BUT.... I've built an all analog pedal board and everything is true bypass. 70% of it are madbean pedals. :-)

I'm building a pedalsync 9 board (it's basically an octa switch, but I can customize it a bit better).

Of course, these switches have a lot of parts, and they add distance between your guitar and your amp with all the patch send and return, the small traces on the boards, etc. I don't wanna lose too much high end.

If I added a switchable buffer at the input (just like the octa switch does), would this help? I shy away from buffered pedals, even if they sound good, because they tend to make my true bypass fuzz pedals really noisy when I'm not playing.

Would the fat pants be a bit much for this? I really want to just put in a board and a toggle to turn it on and off and have it built into the switch itself.

Any advice? Thanks in advance!

[jkokura]

Will you ever be in the situation where no pedals will be on at all?

If you have even one pedal on and in the circuit, the signal is already buffered. As an example of this, I have an always on compressor before I hit anything else. With this in place, and onboard buffer isn't necessary as the output of the comp is already buffered.

Once you have a buffer in place, there isn't much logic in adding another. Once your signal is low impedance, you don't need to make it low impedance again.

Jacob

[greysun]

While i considered it, I never made a compressor cause I play through a jazzmaster, which is famously bright. So if I wanted a clean tone, it wouldn't be going through any pedals at all - just the switch. I suppose that could be my tuner, which is buffered... Nevertheless, if there's a small buffer or something that I could put in place and have the option of a non-buffered clean, why not?