Straight Jive: Your Questions ANSWERED! RSS

buffer, circuit, driver, impedance, input, Jack Deville, output, pedal, signal, volume -

What's a buffer?  What's an impedance?  What's an internetz? We've all heard about the benefits of a "buffer" and how fuzz pedals don't "like" buffers, right?  Your best buddy insists of having a buffer at the front of his pedalboard-- after his favorite fuzz pedal of course, and even recommends putting a buffer at the end of his pedalboard to "drive his cables" and "maintain his signal strength."  So, the question(s) is/are:  WHY do we want these buffers, and do we even need them at all?  Pop a pop, crack a beer, put on a record and lets'd debunk the...

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1spot, BOSS, Cry Baby, Dark Echo, Fulltone, Ibanez, Jack Deville, Line 6, pedal, power supply, Tremolo, Tube Screamer, Tuner, VooDoo Labs -

Dave in Portland, OR asks: "Using a 1Spot power adapter, how many pedals is too many pedals to chain together on a 1Spot? I am using a 1Spot with an extender and it's powering: Fulltone Choralflange Crybaby wah Jack Deville Dark Echo Line 6 MM-4 modeler (with One-Spot Line 6 adapter) BOSS® TU-2 Tuner BOSS® TR-2 Tremolo Voodoo Labs Sparkle Drive Ibanez Tube Screamer My thought is, how can this one power supply work for all of these? Am I risking damaging anything?" Hey Dave! Great question. I'd wager there are a lot of guys out there wondering if this...

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Phaser, TZF, volume -

Steve in New Zealand asks: "Why does my Hardwire Phaser pedal reduce the volume when I turn it on?" Well Steve, there's a number of things that could be happening here. The first thing that comes to mind is how a phaser works. Essentially, a phaser creates a series of related notches in the frequency spectrum, similar to a flanger pedal like the TunnelWorm TZF, but the "mechanical" operation of the effects' are different. In short, what is probably happening here is not a actual reduction in volume, but a reduction in perceived volume due to the frequency response of the...

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1spot, DC, pedal, power, SuperMoon -

Jon in Murfeesboro, TN asks: "What kind of power supply does my SuperMoon need?"   The SuperMoon is designed to be powered by 9 volts, from either a standard 9V battery, or an industry standard 2.1mm negative center-pin 9VDC adapater such as the VisualSound 1 Spot power adapter, or VooDoo Labs PedalPower 2. SuperMoon has internal reverse polarity protection to prevent damage to the pedal if the wrong power supply is used, and can even be run on 18V if desired, HOWEVER: testing has concluded that 18VDC does not offer any notable improvement to tone, sound quality, feel or really anything at all. As a result,...

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