7 thoughts on “Show 233 – NAMM catch up and pedal board buffers”

  2. Glad you guys are back. I’ve been listening to your show at work for five weeks now and only have eighteen more episodes to catch up on.

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  3. Great show guys. Another buffer design is the supposedly magical Cornish buffer. He sells it for a lot of money here:

    http://www.petecornish.co.uk/SAELD-1.html

    but you can build it super cheap. I built this version on a veroboard:

    http://tagboardeffects.blogspot.com/2012/02/cornish-buffer.html

    I recently went through and patched into my pedalboard (everything bypassed) at every location, recording the same lick. Then I could listen back (in sequence) to how the different buffers were interacting and changing the noise floor. My conclusions were that the cornish buffer at the start of my chain (permanently on, no switch, hidden under my board wired to the input jack) is absolutely necessary. Incredibly important, all of my high end comes back and it just sounds good. I also discovered that one of my pedals was adding a lot of noise (even when bypassed, and it was true bypass as well!), after some investigation it turns out the chassis wasn’t grounded. I fixed that and now have a nice quiet board.

    P.S. if you’re spending $12 on a 3PDT, you’re doing it wrong: http://www.taydaelectronics.com/electromechanical/switches-key-pad/stomp-switch/3pdt-stomp-foot-pedal-switch.html

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    • One other buffer to consider is the Sarno Music Solutions Steel Guitar Black Box: http://www.sarnomusicsolutions.com/products/sgbb.html

      Originally designed for pedal steel players like myself, it’s a tube buffer to capture the pickup/tube interactions before a pedalboard. It’s expensive ($310) but supposed to be great, especially with solid state amps like many steel players use. I’ve also read about people bussing mixes through it, or using it when recording acoustic/bass direct. It also has variable input impedance to get Ryan excited.

      I just ordered one but won’t have it for another 4-6 weeks.

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  4. GSAA,

    I had totally forgot about pedal buffers. I read a thing a while back about it and then promptly forgot about it. Headed to the pedal board and gonna move things around a bit.

    Buffer the chicken

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