Major Evolvement of the Un-Buffer

After discovering a possible solution for the shortcomings of my tone using the Boss WL20 wireless I have been busy working towards improving the performance to get as close to that of a guitar cable.

I Intend to Make a Video on This Soon

The History:

If the point I’ve got it to now is the best I’ll get then I’m already satisfied. I’m confident that a future discovery or experiment may improve it further because there’s always room for improvement in my opinion, but right now I think this is definitely good enough for me to be happy about using my wireless.

The big news about this is that I’m now using a germanium Fuzz Face type pedal with a wireless and suffering almost none of the usual problems created by using a wireless. It’s fun getting my wah to behave with the setup, but it is possible to get it useable (I don’t use wah that much anyway when playing live).

Now 2 passive devices sit between my Boss WL20 and the germanium fuzz. That’s probably overkill, but that’s because of the way my experiments developed and it has some other benefits…

Passive Device No. 1

The first is the simple un-buffer device that is described on the AMZ-FX website. This is designed to simulate a guitar pickup and a typical guitar’s output impedance using a small coil, a potentiometer and a capacitor.

The pot varies the DC resistance of the circuit by adding a varying amount of resistance to that of the coil (one side of a transformer). It’s not exactly the same as using a cable into the fuzz, but it behaves a lot more like it with the wireless receiver. It’s trying to fool the fuzz into seeing a guitar instead of a buffered device. The fuzz sounds much better with this device and the cleaning up from the guitar’s volume is possible, except graduation from full gain to cleanup is different. I have to turn it down further to get a similar amount of cleanup than I would using the cable. It does seem to work though!

I also put in a bypass switch.

Passive Device No. 2

This was the first un-buffer I built, which I have further tweaked. This one is different, but pretty much results in the same responsiveness as the first device. However, this one has volume and tone pots like a typical guitar circuit and two transformers in series. That’s only really because I originally used two and wired it to select one or both for some variation. That option didn’t really have much affect, so I just left both in series.

The coil(s) in the 2nd device are by-passable should I decide that necessary at any time, the tone control is bypassable for the same reason and the volume control is by-passable too, which allows me to switch between a preset cleanup setting and full volume.

When I was experimenting with all of this I discovered that the cleanup sweep on the guitar’s volume pot was ok, but not the magic, sudden Fuzz Face drop from full fuzz to sparkly clean with a bit of hair (which I absolutely love). However, with the rhythm/lead pedal being after the simulated guitar circuit, it works the volume/cleanup very, very closely to how the guitar volume would when using the cable.

The added bonus is that I can just step on it for my lead sound and return back to the exact, preferred cleanup setting that I have carefully dialled in. It’s a passive lead boost pedal.

So Why Two Devices?

The reason is a bit of practicality and some extra versatility in getting various pedals to behave before the fuzz when necessary.

The input jack to the first device is mounted on top, so it’s a really nice place to plug in the Wireless receiver; It won’t get stepped on by accident and I can just pull it out to power it off while leaving it in position during set breaks.

When I use a wah pedal, depending on the settings I get an oscillating howl, which rendered the whole thing unusable, but I discovered that a combination of settings using the bypass switches and the impedance pot gives me the ability to dial it out, making the wah behave. This includes when I’m using the cable, so it helps in the studio as well as on stage.

What I also discovered is that both these devices do very little to affect the tone and behaviour of the rig when I do use the cable, so while I can bypass everything completely, I don’t really need to. Taking the occasional use of the wah into account, I’ve pretty much arrived at a setting that is permanent, but I can always tweak for specific effects if I want to.

But the extra bonus is that the coils in both devices seem to reduce some noise when activated, providing further benefit. The noise floor of the rig is much lower than it was before implementing the unbuffer(s).

In Practice

The impedance pot seems to affect the gain, but it’s not really drastic and the difference is only really audible at full volume, which is the lead tone. Also, it enables me to fine tune the sound of the wireless to closer match the cable tone and I can also vary it should I want to for a little extra or less fuzz in the lead tone.

The Fuzz is always on set to full volume and full fuzz (often backed off a small amount) and has become part of the core signal chain, which I will detail in another article. The fuzz is less noisy than my other “Lead” pedals, which are currently taking a break in my pedal drawer (they are a Mooer Ultra Drive, a Mooer Black Secret and a Lovepedal Amp 50).

I’m sure there will be other tweaks to the overall rig over time, but now they are focused more on improving things like noise, which is already pretty good considering I am using a daisy chain for up to 12 pedals.

The Biggest Surprise

This is all using a Hotone Britwind pedal board amp. I held back on getting a fuzz pedal for a long time because I was worried it just wouldn’t gel with a solid state amp, but I ended up getting the Tomsline G-Fuzz due to it being very affordable and it’s exceeded all my hopes. I was pretty realistic in my expectations of how it would sound and perform, but I still had a pipe-dream about how it could sound. Amazingly it’s closer to the pipe-dream than my realistic expectations.

I have spent a lot of time dialling in that amp with some additional, always on pedals though so that probably helped. I don’t think I’ve got closer to the vintage tones I love in such a small package. It’s close enough for me!