Pedal board issues

[Damonjames]

Hi guys n gals. So I'm building my first pedal board and it goes something like this:

Korg pitchblack
Sansamp bass driver di
Ehx small stone nano
Dunlop 105q cry baby
Black Russian big muff
Way huge swollen pickle
Boss oc-2 octave
Boss odb-3 bass overdrive
Boss ceb-3 bass chorus
Running off a CIOKS big John power supply

I am getting some pretty bad tone suck, mostly bottom end it seems. When I plug into the the amp direct, I get a sound I would normally expect but run through the board and I get really bad drop In volume and tone. I am assuming this is the "tone suck" everyone talks about!!!
The top half of the chain seems fine, it seems to be located from the big muff on, especially in the last 3 boss pedals. Is this normal? I know the boss aren't true bypass, but are the others??? If anyone can suggest a way to rectify this that would be great!

[tonyquipment]

Have less effects?

The boss pedals are buffered..

[Kev]

Boss pedals have good buffers so tone loss or volume loss would not be expected, what you are describing for the pedals you have isn't right.

Laborious, but you should check each pedal individually against their bypass and the direct to amp tone, a loop switch would be best to test this for easy comparison.

[JapanAxe]

[quote name='Kev' timestamp='1373125353' post='2133986']
Boss pedals have good buffers so tone loss or volume loss would not be expected, what you are describing for the pedals you have isn't right.

Laborious, but you should check each pedal individually against their bypass and the direct to amp tone, a loop switch would be best to test this for easy comparison.
[/quote]
I agree with the second statement, but the decoupling capacitor at the input of each buffered pedal will shave a little bit off the bottom end, and by the time this has happened several times, you can expect a significant loss of bass.

Damon, once you have worked out which pedals are the worst culprits (try them in groups of 2 or 3 as well as individually), I suggest you look to true-bypass these with something like the [url="http://www.thegigrig.com/acatalog/Loopy2-301.html#SID=13"]Loopy-2[/url] or [url="http://www.thegigrig.com/acatalog/QuarterMasterhome.html#SID=1"]Quartermaster[/url] from [url="http://www.thegigrig.com/"]TheGigRig[/url]. I also recommend leaving the best buffered pedal connected near the front of the signal chain, as it will happily drive the next pedal or a long cable run to your amp.

[Damonjames]

I tried them individually because I thought one of the patch leads I made, or the power supply leads may have been dodgy. Definately seems to be the combination of the three boss pedals together, but will check again as you asked so nicely!

[Kev]

[quote name='JapanAxe' timestamp='1373126473' post='2134002']

I agree with the second statement, but the decoupling capacitor at the input of each buffered pedal will shave a little bit off the bottom end, and by the time this has happened several times, you can expect a significant loss of bass.

Damon, once you have worked out which pedals are the worst culprits (try them in groups of 2 or 3 as well as individually), I suggest you look to true-bypass these with something like the [url="http://www.thegigrig.com/acatalog/Loopy2-301.html#SID=13"]Loopy-2[/url] or [url="http://www.thegigrig.com/acatalog/QuarterMasterhome.html#SID=1"]Quartermaster[/url] from [url="http://www.thegigrig.com/"]TheGigRig[/url]. I also recommend leaving the best buffered pedal connected near the front of the signal chain, as it will happily drive the next pedal or a long cable run to your amp.
[/quote]

I would agree if the tone suck/volume drop was minimal, however from what he is describing in such a short relative pedal chain, I think a pedal has a fault.

If you believe it to be the 3 Boss pedals together causing the issue, have you tried those alone and the rest alone and see if the issue only exists in one?

[Thunderbird]

I don't know much about pedals but could it be a power drop in your power supply maybe your pedals are drawing to much juice if its OK when you take the Boss of the chain have you tried removing other pedals and running the Boss ones to see if you have an issue?

[OzMike]

Try removing the OC2 first - it's intended as a guitar pedal, and decoupling cap at the input of the buffer is smaller than for the equivalent circuits on the bass-focused pedals.

Also, the active buffering components can fail or part fail in such a way that the 'bypass' is not working properly - I've seen this from time to time on some older Boss pedals I've repaired. This could be an issues with zero or all of the Boss pedals you have (or indeed any similarly-buffered pedal). As others have said, a bit of trial and error will likely give you the source of the problem.

BTW - you are not running the Samsamp at the end of the chain for some particular reason?

[Damonjames]

So I've had another play, and again it seems as though it is the sum of the three boss pedals causing the drop. I don't have an A/B looper so I have to just swap out, so I suspect I am getting a little out of each of them which together adds to a lot.
In answer to you question OZMike, it's purely for real estate on the board. I don't really use it for a DI right now so the fact the effect come after doesn't really make that much difference. Give the issues I'm having with the boss pedals, I might ditch them off and move things around

[Prime_BASS]

[quote name='Damonjames' timestamp='1373390131' post='2137046']
So I've had another play, and again it seems as though it is the sum of the three boss pedals causing the drop. I don't have an A/B looper so I have to just swap out, so I suspect I am getting a little out of each of them which together adds to a lot.
In answer to you question OZMike, it's purely for real estate on the board. I don't really use it for a DI right now so the fact the effect come after doesn't really make that much difference. Give the issues I'm having with the boss pedals, I might ditch them off and move things around
[/quote]

Looking at your list, you have a lot of dirt and I doubt that the boss one is doing something the other cant do, aside from it being three band and having slightly different grind compared to the sans amp.
Personally I'd ditch the odb-3 and stock the octave in a clean loop on its own, engage it when you need it and you have a massive clean low end, while every thing else fills in the mids.

[Sibob]

I've never had what I would describe as a noticable drop in volume/tone from using multiple Boss/buffered pedals. There may be a slight change in tone, but whether it's a 'loss' is subjective, often it can be EQ'd out on the amp if you're that way inclined.
If the issue is significant, I would point my finger at a faulty pedal somewhere in there.
But I agree with Ste above, get rid of the ODB-3, horrible pedal
Depending on what version of OC-2 you have, the older Octaver had a slight gain drop, but again, not significant really.

Si

[cheddatom]

doesn't sound right to me at all, you shouldn't need to true-bypass the boss pedals. Have you tried them on batteries? When you wire them back up are you swapping around patch leads? It's worth checking all your patch leads as well as different power options.

I like the ODB-3, for massive low end it's perfect.

[Damonjames]

After thinking about it, I may have gotten a little giddy with trying to put everything on the board just because I could. I actually like te odb-3 but can't remember the last time I used it! I've just dropped them off for the time being, if I need them again ill play about with it and see what I can come up with. Thanks for all the feedback!

[Prime_BASS]

[quote name='Damonjames' timestamp='1373461015' post='2137819']
After thinking about it, I may have gotten a little giddy with trying to put everything on the board just because I could. I actually like te odb-3 but can't remember the last time I used it! I've just dropped them off for the time being, if I need them again ill play about with it and see what I can come up with. Thanks for all the feedback!
[/quote]

Pedals should be fun at the end of the day but te seriousness has to come in to play with issues.
If you don't use them makes sense to get them off.

[TG Flatline]

[quote name='cheddatom' timestamp='1373458815' post='2137777']
doesn't sound right to me at all, you shouldn't need to true-bypass the boss pedals. Have you tried them on batteries? When you wire them back up are you swapping around patch leads? It's worth checking all your patch leads as well as different power options.

I like the ODB-3, for massive low end it's perfect.
[/quote]

Best way is to set up a few and see the difference, real world. Personally, I've had bad experiences with them (my TU-2 is kept out of line for this reason), but have seen other people use an entire pedalboard of Boss with no problems whatsoever. I'm not a die-hard True Bypass fan boy, but I'm not keen on Boss bypasses and, personally, would modify them for true bypass and remove the unneccessary extra components if I used them. Just my opinion though.

[sixdegrees]

I run a similar chain of pedals and haven't noticed any loss of tone or volume. But I do run an Aphex 1402 at the end of the chain, which is fantastic for boosting frequencies that the room I'm playing in may rob me of.