Re: Do any of the Digitech Hardwire distortions compare...
Doh......it is the oldest joke here, that I do not think much of tb, and all that talk about bypass and all that mumbo jumbo!
Sorry for assuming that it was common knowledge, it is not serious, it is sarcasm....once again sorry about that!
Anyways now that I have to be serious....bugger me!
A guitar signal only have so much Mv at its dispossal, so it is not the buffers fault that there so little signal in the first place!
At its very heart a guitar musiclevel signal is a puny thing, vunerable to statics, ground hums, and so on!
Back to the buffer, amps uses lowimpedant signals as well, at line levels, thus is has more resistance to degredation, as it is already a strong signal!
Same with 19" effect units, also line level and lowimpedance.
Pedals have a limitation in the weak signal from the guitar, as it is already degraded from the pickup, its origin!
You can only have so many pedals in a chain before the signal becomes close to useless.
And that is not the buffers fault, it only converts the signal from high to low, and they do not rob signal, the ensure that what ever is remaining can have some strenght left, but pedals are connected with cables, old plugs that are more than 100 years old techwise, nothing to there, the signal will degrade more and more each time it travels through two jacks and a cable!
There is nothing highend over serial highimpedant stuff, it is the worst kind of audio signal!
And a signal that is firmly rooted in the midrange only, cardbordish stuff in other words, harsh and unpleasent mostly!
Pedals colours sound, cables colour sound, you cannot escape that in any way!!!
Compromise is what anyone can achive!
Nothing else!
And why all this has become such a "important" issue is beyond me on a good day
As when you think about it, guitar is lo-fi, ugly, middy, not hi-fi, not strong signal equipment by nature.
So you do what you can with what you got, nothing is gained by pretending it is anything else!!
All the most cool tones out there is made on normal down to earth gear!
This modern idea that it is a hi-fi'sh highend thing is just wishfull thinking, in hope of getting something bought to you on a silverplatter!!
It is not even a matter of buffers or true bypass....but how you mix it up and get something interesting out of it!!
The tech is irrelevant, there are no rules!!!
I don't even like writing all this crap, I think I am wasting my time to be honest!!
As Zappa said!!!
Shut up and play!
Niels
