Order of your pedal line

As I posted a few weeks back, I just purchased a new BBE Windowpane Fuzz pedal. I've been learning guitar tech things on line and today we talked about impedance, capacitance, buffers, and the pedal chain.

When I received my pedal, I just stuck it in line after my modded BD-2 Blues Driver, thinking it was just another type of distortion. I didn't know that fuzz pedals liked a different impedance than everybody else to sound their best. Luckily, my BBE pedal is hard wired true bypass so I can stick it in front of my tuner with no issues (TU-2 which of course is buffered). But, what if I didn't have a true bypass fuzz?

Am I just the idiot on the block not knowing this years ago? Does everybody do this already? Have y'all noticed a big tone change in your fuzz if you moved it?

Also, on the BBE website it states the Windowpane is has a 50K Low Z input. Is that a typo or can 50,000 ohms be considered low for some reason?

Larry

Last edited by Zippy on Mon Dec 02, 2013 1:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.

It was only several years ago I started to understand all that.
I'll go straight to my old thomas wah ( with hardwire bypass mod) from the
guitar with the fender champ lap pickup, then buffered to an old fuzzface.
The buffer quality makes a huge difference .
That old pickup really works soooo good with the fuzzface , I really want another for the neck position.

I'd go right to the fuzzface if I wasn't using the wah, it still seems to react and sound right
even though it's not seeing the pickup windings directly.
The Fuzz will react with the wah's inductance coil in certain setups, creating some squealing that will change depending
on the wah's position. Sometimes it's just a bit of trial and error to find the order that makes most or all your pedals happy ,
especially when mixing old and new tech.

Gilmour reverses ( actually he had a switch installed that does this) the input and output cables on the wah to get that siren screaming used on Echoes. A Binson Echorec also helps




Joy !!

Elwood,
Excuse my ignorance, but what is a Fender Champ lap pickup?

The more I learn, the more questions I have, and I get a bit more confused until it all comes together for me.

So, a fuzz has a low Z and high Z out, but you still put your buffer in front of it? That's the way I have mine now actually. I know some who use 2 buffers, both before and after the pedal board.

You know, Geoffrey Teese built my wah years ago and I believe it's true bypass as well. I think I'll stick both dudes out front and see what happens.

Larry

50K input impedance is definitely low for a guitar device (several hundred K would be more usual), but actually not uncommon for a fuzz. It will skim off some highs, and is just part of the history / vibe of many fuzzes. Sounds like the Windowpane is just aiming to emulate those older units. If it's nice, it's nice!

Elwood,
Excuse my ignorance, but what is a Fender Champ lap pickup?

The more I learn, the more questions I have, and I get a bit more confused until it all comes together for me.

I installed an old pickup that came from a '51-52 Fender 'Champ' Lap steel. Sounds good clean and dirty, and talk about classic tones....yum

I have an old rack unity gain mixer that buffers the fuzzface but doesn't choke it off, it's probably a little higher impedance than a pedal .

I put a trimpot just after the input on my fuzz to help fine tune the gain. Tuning the transistors can help too. I find that some of the best tones are from a guitar vol at 8-10 ( it's clean but gritty below that) , fuzzface gain set pretty high, and the volume dropped back a bit so that the noise floor almost disappears . Backing off the volume a bit will clean up the sound and usually make most unwanted buzzes disappear(or pos 2 or 4)...then kick the volume up to 9-10 on the guitar for solo's etc.
One of my favorite tones is the neck pickup (single coil) , guitar tone rolled back to 2-3 so the treble just breaks a little when picked harder, wah cocked almost all the way forward...then fuzz. It has that nice Hendrix 'Red House" tone.

Elwood,
I like those types of tones too. A friend has a wah with germanium transistors. If he rolls back too much on the volume, the fuzz effect seems to go away. Doesn't do that with these silicon transistors.

Sounds like you have a cool rig.

Larry

Nick,
Now I'm getting confused. Maybe this book assumes adding the K to the end of all numbers. I thought low was 0-150 ohms not 0-150K ohms.

Thanks for the answer and I'll re read this crap.

Larry