True Bypass Problem - dulling the signal!

[plunderpot]

I modded an old Deluxe Memory Man a year or two ago to have true-bypass.  It's been great, but I noticed while playing live at some point that my bypassed signal was sounding funny.  I tested all of my pedals with a separate true-bypass looper and found that the DMM sounded dark/dull while in bypass...  Doh!

Does anyone have any ideas of what might be causing this, or what I should look for to go about fixing it?  Thanks ahead of time!   

J.

[Taylor]

You either screwed it up, or more likely you have a long cable after the pedal. Long or crappy cables have high capacitance, which attenuates high frequencies. When the signal is buffered (effect on), you won't lose highs to the capacitance of the cable. Then, when it is true bypassed, the signal's no longer buffered, so the capacitance takes effect.

This is why people sometimes believe true bypass is actually worse than buffered bypass, and why people pay gargantuan sums for Pete Cornish boards, which have tube buffers between every effect which are always on.

You can either switch to buffered bypass, or use shorter cables, and fewer effects. Or just try replacing your cable with one with less capacitance (not necessarily a more expensive one).

Edit: oops, I reread your post. Are you saying that the pedal sounds different using its own "true bypass" than it does in a true bypass loop? If so, you must have messed up your TB job. We can't diagnose that without seeing the pedal.

[solderman]

Hi
Have you done something like this to mod the pedal then you are OK


If you still have problems with dull tone you can always build yourself a simple line buffer and place it before or after your pedal board depending the length and quality of the cables you use before and after the board. (or both). Then you can spend your money on nice effects instead of high quality cables. Although they allso get the job done,  this way you can buy good enough cables, add some pedals to your board and still keep your tone.
http://www.muzique.com/lab/buffers.htm

[Processaurus]

To test the trueness of your bypass, just test the resistance between the tip and the sleeve on a cord plugged in the input, if it reads anything other than open circuit on the meter's highest setting, the bypass is not "true", as there is a load on the input when it is bypassed.

How is the Dry Out jack hooked up on your memory man? Is it wired right to the input jack?  Might be something funny going on with it.

[plunderpot]

Yep, it seems likely that I goofed somewhere...  I'll try to go through everything and check it.

@Processaurus: I'll check that with a meter.  The dry output is hooked directly to the input jack, but I don't use the dry output at all.  If there is a load on the input, any idea what would be causing that?

@Taylor: Yeah, I was testing it with a true-bypass loop, so it seems something is awry in my work...