Coming up next: TS808

[Mikkel]

Being most satisfied with my tonebender,
next project will be to bring my old ts808 back
to life.

For no particular reason, the latch simply sprung out
all over the stage a few months back. I wasn't able
to collect all the parts, so a replacement is inevitable..

For the moment I'm using a RI ts9 for boost instead,
but since I've got the genuine article lying around, I'd
like to use that instead.

Anybody knows if it's possible to find an original latch, or
suggest any possible replacement?

-Is it possible (and this, I know is a retorical question), to
make true bypass in a ts 808?

Mikkel

[smoguzbenjamin]

If you put a 3PDT in the pedal you can make it true bypass

[Jay Doyle]

Steve at Small Bear sells the replacement switches for those.

It wouldn't be feasible to try to put a 3PDT switch in a 808 case and beyond that, the 808 circuit doesn't load down the signal as much as other circuits that would need a true bypass like a wah or fuzz face.

IMO, True Bypass is overrated. There are a number of famous musicians who never used a True Bypass effect (or have non-true bypass in thier line), Jimi, SRV, Trey Anastasio, etc., and they didn't have any problems...

Again, IMO, true bypass has been exploited by the boutiquers (to their credit, great marketing) for a number of reasons:

1 - A lot of musicians like the idea of a "straight in" approach.
2 - Some classic effects (the prices of which made the clone/boutique market attractive in the first place), which were not designed with clairity of bypass in mind, do load down the signal.
3 - It is a significant amount of work to include the flip flop circuitry on an already tightly stuffed circuit board and come up with an enclosure that can accuate a momentary switch w/o it being destroyed by on-stage conditions (ala Boss). Why bother with all that when you can spend a bit more on a switch (and dump the cost on the consumer)?
4 - And like I mentioned, it is a great marketing device. "What!!! your effects aren't true bypass? You are destroying your tone! You need these (which I happen to build)"

That being said, for reason #3, I usually use True Bypass in my effects.

Again, I don't mean this as an attack, just as an observation. A properly designed circuit can be fine for a lot of people. Just ask Stevie.

Jay Doyle

[Oliver]

Steve at Small Bear sells the replacement switches for those.

It wouldn't be feasible to try to put a 3PDT switch in a 808 case and beyond that, the 808 circuit doesn't load down the signal as much as other circuits that would need a true bypass like a wah or fuzz face.

IMO, True Bypass is overrated. There are a number of famous musicians who never used a True Bypass effect (or have non-true bypass in thier line), Jimi, SRV, Trey Anastasio, etc., and they didn't have any problems...

Again, IMO, true bypass has been exploited by the boutiquers (to their credit, great marketing) for a number of reasons:

1 - A lot of musicians like the idea of a "straight in" approach.
2 - Some classic effects (the prices of which made the clone/boutique market attractive in the first place), which were not designed with clairity of bypass in mind, do load down the signal.
3 - It is a significant amount of work to include the flip flop circuitry on an already tightly stuffed circuit board and come up with an enclosure that can accuate a momentary switch w/o it being destroyed by on-stage conditions (ala Boss). Why bother with all that when you can spend a bit more on a switch (and dump the cost on the consumer)?
4 - And like I mentioned, it is a great marketing device. "What!!! your effects aren't true bypass? You are destroying your tone! You need these (which I happen to build)"

That being said, for reason #3, I usually use True Bypass in my effects.

Again, I don't mean this as an attack, just as an observation. A properly designed circuit can be fine for a lot of people. Just ask Stevie.

Jay Doyle

Hi,

for my opinion, TB is sometimes overrated as a commercial reason.
I dont think that non TB kills Tone, but it takes influence on the Signal.

F.Eg. I play a modified Fender DualShowman Reverb, that is modded to
a one Channel 60Watt ClassA Amp.
It produces a great Overdrive for itself. Very direct and agile Sound.
You can feel the interaction from Your Guitar with the Amp and the Cabinet. As You connect an Effect using non TB the Sound is great too, but You dont feel it anymore. The Interaction is no longer there. It feels
flat and some kind of dead.

Playing in Bandcontext it might be OK and no one would hear the difference.

On the Other Side, a Buffer in NonTB Effects changes The Tone of The Signal using other effects.
Eg.:
Using a ColorSound Overdrive for itself, it boosts the Preamptubes to Hell, producing a great distortion.
Connecting a BossPedal after the ColorSound Overdriver breaks the Signal down to normal non dynamical Tone to the Amp.
Connecting those one before an Effect (Fuzz, Overdriver or something else Vintage like) the sound gets very sharp.

Thats the Reason why i like TrueBypass.

But if i had only f.eg. TS-808 in Original or Ri, Boss DS-1 and perhaps another Buffered Pedal - that would be OK for overall Tone, to produce a Sound, but i wouldnt feel it anymore - thats a big difference (really)

Bye
Oliver

[Doug H]

re. true bypass:

IMO the main issue is "tone-sucking", not true-bypass. If the effect in question sucks tone when switched to bypass, there are things you can do to fix that. I have a number of commercial pedals that suck tone when in bypass. I'm going to build some true-bypass loop boxes to deal with them. I figure that is the quickest and dirtiest way of dealing with that. And loop boxes can come in handy for other things, like switching multiple effects at the same time for example.

Another idea is to leave the switching as-is and implement a buffer to drive the circuit (not the bypass loop) *if* that doesn't muck with the sound of the circuit. This will present a high enough impedance to your guitar signal that true-bypass switching would not be necessary. I used this technique on my wah and it works fine, no noticeable difference in tone with or without the bypassed wah plugged into the chain.

As a rule I don't like buffers in a bypass circuit and see no reason for them in general.  That complicates chaining things like fuzz faces, which depend on high Z pickup loading for their tone. OTOH, I could see using a buffer *after* all the pedals if you need to drive long cable distances to your amp or something.

If you have a pedal that is not true-bypass, but doesn't suck tone when it is bypassed, leave well enough alone. IMO, there is no problem to solve in that case. This could be the case with your TS, as Jay implied. You will have to listen for yourself and determine if it colors your tone when it is in bypass mode.

Doug

[1wahfreak]

Here is what Pete Cornish says about true bypass. I don't know too much about this guy except that he makes effects and boards for lots of big time musicians and charges way too much for his pedals. Who knows, maybe he knows what he's talking about. You be the judge.....
http://www.petecornish.co.uk/case_against_true_bypass.html

[Greg M.]

I agree with you, Jay.  I only own 5 pedals and rarely run them all at once.  None of them are true bypass, and I don't think my tone is diminished at all.  If building a new pedal, I will more than likely make it true bypass just for the hell of it--have I been brainwashed :oops: ?  But the lack of true bypass certainly isn't a reason not to buy or use.
I do; however, own a Guyatone tremolo that BOOSTS my signal and it drives me crazy :x , but that's another story.

[petemoore]

As long as everything's going as planned with a buffered bypass situation thing's are cool.
 For repairs and building, I would much rather have to find a switch these days than mess with those input switching actives and associated etc.
 I'll take the metal box with a DPDT or better...I could see if you're having troubles finding decent switches...
 Sometimes buffers help, sometimes they muck up an otherwise happy chain....it all depends.
 One thing I do like about when buffer switches that are working is there is little chance of anything going wrong.
 Mechanical switches make sense Like old Harleys...you can probably find the parts easily, and if you know how to fix em' you'll be having a working unit the whole time.
 Buffers are like Mercedes...they're expensive, got a bunch of extra stuff to make 'em go, once you get one going, they have a great track record for being dependable...just hope nothing goes wrong...unless you happen to be a Mercedes mechanic with the various spare parts.

[amz-fx]

Most of the simple transistor buffer circuits will lose a little bit of the signal since the gain is not actually = 1...  this isn't usually a problem but most of the Boss/Ibanez pedals leave 2 buffers in the signal path and I've seen a couple of Boss schematics that have 3 buffers in series at all times, even when bypassed!  So, you end up losing 5% - 10% of the signal as well as having the residual noise tripled due to the redundant buffers...  now multiply this by the number of pedals you have in series.

Another even more significant item is the jfet switchers...  there is an article in the latest Electronics World that provides data on the distortion from jfet switching systems and it is many times more than that contributed by other components in the circuit, especially at the low voltages used in pedals.

regards, Jack

[Jay Doyle]

Most of the simple transistor buffer circuits will lose a little bit of the signal since the gain is not actually = 1...  this isn't usually a problem but most of the Boss/Ibanez pedals leave 2 buffers in the signal path and I've seen a couple of Boss schematics that have 3 buffers in series at all times, even when bypassed!  So, you end up losing 5% - 10% of the signal as well as having the residual noise tripled due to the redundant buffers...  now multiply this by the number of pedals you have in series.

This is a good point. But if you are not using the JFET switching scheme and just using a SPDT switch with the circuit connected to the input at all times, and the circuits input impedence is a meg or so, there won't be as much loss, even straight from the guitar. If that SPDT circuit follows another effect, I wouldn't worry about it at all.

Another even more significant item is the jfet switchers...  there is an article in the latest Electronics World that provides data on the distortion from jfet switching systems and it is many times more than that contributed by other components in the circuit, especially at the low voltages used in pedals.

I don't think this is all that significant because like you said (in your sound of distortion thread):

"Think about how subtle the tone difference is... especially since we are dealing only with pure tones here, and how much harder 1% distortion would be to hear in a more complex signal like a guitar note.. Think about how much less noticeable it would have been had I made it 0.1% distortion, which is still 100x more than that produced in a cheap capacitor."

Regards,

Jay

[Oliver]

Hi,

so, it would make Sense to.....:

f.eg. You Use a 30 ft cable from Guitar to EffectBoard, using 10 FX with TrueBypass and another 30ft cable to Your Amp.

..... to have one Buffer at the entrance of the FX Board and another one
at the last Output, to the Amp?

As i had that idea some time ago, a Pedal with Switchable Buffer at In and Output can be helpful.

bye
Oliver

[Ge_Whiz]

Hmmm... those who can't afford to pay for Mr Cornish's "fiendishly clever pre-amp" could do what I have done with a couple of my guitars, and build a one-transistor very-high-to-very-low impedance buffer into the body of the guitar itself.

The only unfortunate side effect is that these particular guitars, which give superb tone even if the cable reaches half-way across town, and offer instant DI for recording, no longer work properly with my homebrew Fuzz Face. Ah well, I've got other guitars that do. You can't win ALL the time.

For interest only, I would like to know what qualifies the Cornish impedance-matching pre-amp as being "fiendishly clever" - I suspect it is the fiendishly expensive price tag.  :lol: