Is a tu-2 a tone sucker?

[jolly1423]

I have a older ernie ball volume (one without a tuner output) and I run that right into my tu-2. I was thinking about doing a simple mod on the volume pedal to that the tuner is bypassed. My question is, since the tu-2 is not a tone altering pedal is it still depleting my sound? How much circuitry does the signal run through when it's bypassed? Is it worth doing the volume mod.?
And I'm also wondering how tricky it is to do a true bypass mod on the average Boss pedal (I also have the bd-2 and the ge-7).
Thanks for any input!

[jacobyjd]

Boss makes one of the best buffered bypasses in the business, so no.

[The French connection]

I'll be more anxious about the volume pedal than the tuner if i was you...Try it without your volume pedal!

Dan

[jolly1423]

Is there any way to improve the volume pedal then? Like a higher end pot or something? It's kind of a staple pedal for me so I can't really go without it.

[Stompin Tom]

I'd think running a buffered pedal (like your tuner!) before the volume pedal would help... Maybe after it, too. Could put a simple buffer circuit in the pedal itself.

[The French connection]

Is it Passive (no power) or Active (powered)? It depends...

http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=69563.0

[ayayay!]

A good read:  http://www.stinkfoot.se/andreas/diy/articles/tunout.htm

[trixdropd]

I've heard the tu-2 is a tone sucker from many sources.

[jacobyjd]

I've heard the tu-2 is a tone sucker from many sources.

A lot of people feel that anything with a buffer sucks tone. That is simply not the case. There are plenty of good threads about impedance/cable capacitance, etc. that explain the issue better than I could. However, the buffers the come with Boss pedals do their job well, which guarantees that whatever is sucking tone, it's not that buffer, and is likely to be any number of other things on someone's pedalboard, and IMO, anyone who wants to nitpick about any sort of minute coloration to the tone won't be able to play half as good as the people who don't care about 5pf worth of treble rolloff over a 20' cable, with or without a buffer.

Ignore what the online basement-dwellers tell you. Go listen to one yourself, with gear you're familiar with. Even if you CAN hear a difference, no matter how unlikely, nobody in the audience will.

[jolly1423]

Thanks everyone. Some great info and tips in all that. I can hardly wait to try it out and see how much of a difference it makes. Does anyone out there run any or all of their chain through the effects loop? I've experimented very little with that but I really didn't get very good results. Right now I just run everything between my guitar and the amp input. My chain goes- Volume, wah, tu-2 tuner, Bd-2, line 6 M13, DD-20, GE-7, and then into my amp.

[jacobyjd]

Thanks everyone. Some great info and tips in all that. I can hardly wait to try it out and see how much of a difference it makes. Does anyone out there run any or all of their chain through the effects loop? I've experimented very little with that but I really didn't get very good results. Right now I just run everything between my guitar and the amp input. My chain goes- Volume, wah, tu-2 tuner, Bd-2, line 6 M13, DD-20, GE-7, and then into my amp.

Some thoughts on using effects loops:

The first question to ask is, "Am I using my amp for distortion?" (in this case, we're not talking power tube distortion). If so, think of your amp's preamp section as a distortion pedal. Anything before it that boosts the volume of your signal will make it distort more, and anything that lowers the volume of your signal will make it distort less. So. If this is the case for you, I'd suggest moving your DD-20 into your loop. For the GE-7, things get interesting--do you want to shape your EQ before or after your distortion? Let the answer to that question make your decision. Make sense? If you use a booster for leads, etc. you'll want that in the loop as well.

Now, if you're using your amp basically just for clean headroom, you'll want to leave the effects loop out of the equation--your guitar amp is simply acting as a power amp/post EQ this way.

I run an old 30-watt Crate--kinda like a Classic 30--using the effects loop for a couple things--mainly to make sure that my delay (heck yeah, DD-20!) gets all the clean headroom from the power section that it can get. I also keep things like reverb, some modulation (my phaser doesn't have enough headroom to go in the loop...remember: it's basically line-level), etc.

On my front end, I keep things like tremolo and a booster (I run my amp's gain channel with just a little grit--when I kick on the booster, it's all-out distortion...if I had a BD-2, I'd use it the same way).

My tuner sits wherever I need a buffer and don't already have one.

[Processaurus]

I remember trying the TU-2 in a true bypass loop, and liking the tone better than the bypass, when I ignored the LED and switched the loop a few times to forget whether it was on or off, and just listened.  It was a little brighter.

Definitely your volume pedal is the source of the tone sucking, and like others had suggested, putting the tuner before it will solve the problem.

[jolly1423]

Thanks for the tips, I'll have to experiment a little more with that but that was all extremely helpful.

[liquids]

Sorry to come late (or be redundant) on this discussion.  Jacobyjd's info was good info.   To add some bits:

I'm a fan of buffering, and while I like creating my own buffers into the chain where I want them, the 2 buffers in each boss pedal is plenty fine, and not far from what most of us would build as a buffer anyhow.  I don't like the idea of having a dozen buffers running into each other and on at all times, but it's better than none and all true bypass if you ask me, and as Processaurus' findings confirmed.  Buffers are designed to do the opposite of 'tone suck,' which is 'tone preserve.'  I'd say that the only pedals you have that aren't buffered are your Volume and the Wah.

No one answered your question about true bypassing your boss pedals.  It's kind of complicated, I'd say, nothing I find worth doing personally, and often requires either good drilling, good knowledge of the original schematic, and/or re-housing.  I think there's nothing wrong with the Boss bypass, by the way.  I have a boss pedal in my 90% true-bypass chain right now and got it partly for that reason, originally.

To keep it simple though, your passive volume pedal (I use one too) is the major culprit for tone suck.  It need not be eliminated.  I can't live without one.  But you'd find it much more useful if you put it after your distortion and before your delay pedal, I'd gather.  

Right now your volume pedal is the same as your guitar volume, controlling your pickups volume but not your 'overall signal volume.'  It might be more useful and not sound so strange if you put it later in the pedal chain, since you run distortion pedals.

Passive volume pedals are best both when receiving a buffered signal, and feeding a buffer.  Dare I say in my experience, the latter is more important the former, if you have to pick one or the other, but you don't thankfully.    Your sense of 'tone suck,' more than the pedal though, may have to do with where you run the volume pedal, despite all the buffers you have, since right now it's just making your pickup's signal weaker when you turn it down.

This all should be no problem for you  if you run the chain tuner-->wah-->bs-2-->MD13-->Volume-->DD-20-->GE-7-->amp.  There's some other shifts you might make, but in general that is the way to say most similar to how you run it but putting the volume pedal in the optimal location.  It's got buffers on both sides of it, which should optimize it.

And if your amp is distorting in any way, I second jacobyjds advise to get into using the effects loop.  They are more complicated.  I would remove the volume, DD-20 from the chain, and put those into the effect loop.

I would also experiment with using the M13  in the chain and probably the graphic EQ, too. 

Last but not least, the M13 looks to be a multi-effects unit in itself.  It's probably best designed to run into a clean amp, but the in/out options seem like a conversation in and of themselves, so it's hard to know, and complicated to explain the best way to interface that with an effect loop rig.

Hope this is more helpful than confusing.  

[jacobyjd]

Here's an interesting thought--if you DO use your amp's distortion, that means you're likely to use the M13 primarily for modulation effects and whatnot. Either way, you may be better served by dropping it into your effects loop.

Now, if you're NOT using the amp's distortion, take note that your M13 has an effects loop itself. If Line6 was smart in programming that beast, you'll have a more realistic emulation, amp-wise, of your effects if you treat the M13 more like an amp than an effect, meaning you should be able to toss your delay, volume, and EQ in the send/return loop, so any distortion used in the M13 SHOULD (don't hold me to it) sound better than if the volume went in front of it.

[Ben N]

Just to add to what was already said, since I got here late: I find a TU-2 to be a fine input buffer for your board, and not a tone sucker at all. No special bypassing arrangements are required. In the past I have also ordered my pedals so that the real tone suckers--like that passive volume pedal, and pedals with SPDT bypass, or DPDT where the half the switch is controlling an LED (in my case various MXR, Marshall and Danelectro pedals) are sandwiched between Boss pedals as a way to eliminate/minimize the tone suck, and it works. The problem with Bosses is not that the buffers aren't good, it is that there are two buffers on all the time for every Boss pedal in the chain. That means, for example, if you have Edit: six Boss (or Ibanez, or DOD, or Digitech, or Tech21...) pedals in your chain, there are 12 (!!!) buffers on, even when all the effects are off. While each one individually is pretty kind to your signal, 12 will inevitably add cumulative distortions that do have an effect. For commercial pedals, mixing up the buffered and TBP types (while avoiding as much as possible the bad bypass types) is a happy medium. For DIY, I think the optimum is to have a single input buffer on your board, and to include output buffers on each of your TBP pedals, so that the input of every pedal and the input of your amp(s) always see nice, consistently low-impedance outputs feeding them.

[darron]

my experience with the TU-2 is that it does not suck tone. It has a decent buffer in it, if that's what you want. Once I ran a Tele into a true bypass looper with the TU-2 in it, into a Fender twin. While in effect the tuner brought out a lot of the brighter presence tones. Just goes to show it can be worth while to have that buffer in one place or another...

[liquids]

Good points Ben.  A friend of mine liked running his acoustic guitar through a half a dozen guitar pedals...distortion, delay, chorus, compression, etc.  

Most of them were boss, dod, digitech, ibanez.  

One day he unplugged them and went straight into the board/DI, and noticed the difference and improvement in tone.  When he went back to the original rig with everything bypassed, the way he explained it, "my guitar doesn't sound like an acoustic anymore, it sounds more like an electric."  While ironic given his usage of pedals, I explained the above to him about dozens of buffers all in a row...he's simplified now.  

Guys go round and round about buffers....that being said, I like your solution. It makes a lot of sense for most situations.  

[jacobyjd]

Definitely. It's not buffers themselves that are a problem--it's too many.

Same thing goes for true bypass--it's a good idea for most pedals.

In my rig, I run 2 boss pedals, pretty much at either end of my chain. Other than that, most everything else is TB. If I used 5 or 6 boss pedals, I'd probably put together a looper.

[FlyingZ]

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