6 Guitar Pedal Myths

on today's episode I want to break down the top petal myths that drive me bonkers the ones that get under my skin the ones that like keep me up at night the ones that you know they just get to me and I just want to talk about it sort of vent but I'm gonna do it in like a positive way because you know the Internet's it's so negative I don't want to be negative I still talk about I just want to vent but I want to do it like in a good way you know what I'm saying you guys tracking with me so let's try to do this and I think it's gonna be useful [Music] stand by for a special announcement hello everyone I'm interrupting my own episode to give away in the VCR as promised from the last episode here's the VCR and here's the winning comment from Scott Lovett you're the winner you said when I translate uppercase VCR to a SC i-ight it becomes zero eight six zero six seven zero eight two which are my three favorite numbers in the whole world clearly this should go to me so this is coming your way and just because I want to because I can I really think Justin Croft you deserve one as well so I'm gonna send out a second VCR here's here's your comment I'm a little worried about you and I think you need some joy in your life your comment says I need the VCR because I just sent my dad to jail no kidding very depressed but I did just have a great sandwich so dot dot dot smiley face you're gonna get one too man you know I just want to see you smile that's important to me so two VCRs going out in the mail today we will respond to your original comment with information on how to claim your beautiful new pedal now back to the original programming in the late 90s when I first got prodigy dial-up internet and started downloading Pearl Jam tabs and driving my parents crazy I never would have dreamed that the internet would be what it is today in 2018 and you on the other end of this camera you're human you're living here like me and you understand that the Internet is an amazing thing but it's also complex and slightly frustrating and one of the things that really drives me bonkers are these pedal myths I see them on forums I see people like you sincerely wanting to understand something and quoting something that is a myth and so today I want to walk through it I want to blast through the pedal myths that really do drive me bonkers and I think it's gonna help you as a consumer I think you're gonna be able to look at stuff in a more factual way and worry about what really matters that is what makes you play guitar better not what some myth on the internet says so let's jump right in myth number one that true-bypass is better than buffered it's absolutely not true let me break it down this is an old full tone pedal it has a foot switch when you click the foot switch you turn the pedal on so it's making a distortion sound when you turn it off it bypasses the circuit completely as if you were just going do a little patch cable then you have boss bypass or buffered bypass when the circuit is on it is distorted and in this case it is mega distorted when you hit the switch it is bypassed from the circuit through a buffer so true bypass buffer bypass neither one is better it is completely dependent on the way your guitar rig is set up and it is completely dependent on each of you individually I have seen people super snooty by Altru bypass and make these lavish comments about how much better it is and their guitar tone is horrible in bypass because every foot of guitar cable is capacitance and that capacitance is basically the same effect as barely rolling your tone knob into dark so the more true bypass you have the darker your signal becomes but if you put a buffer in it fixes it completely and doesn't sonically change anything that being said neither one is better and you need a little bit of both so moving on number two boutique is better no it's just not you can't make those comments like what does it even mean first of all what is boutique when I started in 2007 Boutique meant something totally different than now I remember being on a panel in LA I think it was 2012 and someone asked me along with other builder friends am I like Brian wampler and Jamie from Earthquaker and Robert Keeley they threw out the question do you like being Boutique builder and I remember thinking like I don't even know that I am I don't know what it means anymore because at that time there was a Chinese pedal company putting out fully digital pedals nothing wrong with that and they used a tag line boutique tone what does it mean so in 2018 it absolutely doesn't mean anything and I'll say this and I set it on the panel if boutique means being rude to my customers having horrible customer service having no warranty program I just don't want to be boutique I want Jay Ches to make great pedals and be really great to our customers so with that said Boutique is not better and here's another great example this is a DoD FX 53 classic tube overdrive I would say this is absolutely the anti boutique like if I were to throw this up on the internet and say look at my boutique pedal I would totally get roasted then you have the Timmy this is made by my good friend Paul Cochran he lives outside of Nashville and he builds every one of these at his house they're amazing he's done this forever they're both great products I love this as much as I love this the boutique one which I think Paul Cochran is actually staying true to the definition of boutique is definitely not better to me than this they're just totally different I would use them in different ways so Boutique is not better number three there's no way you can make that peddle specifically referring to the cloth centaur but really any other pedal there's not a pedal on earth that you can't replicate the reason being is we're smart people we live in 2018 we have gone to the moon or at least faked it either of those is incredibly difficult we slice bread we hold in our hands a supercomputer we have McDonald's delivery through uber eats the level of genius minds on this earth that exist but yet we say we can't copy a circuit that is based around technology pushing a century old a pedal can be replicated an ant can be replicated like there's nothing that magical I know we want to hold on to those things and we want them to be super magical and they are to us because of the event the memories we have the things attached to our gear but we can't get so into that that we actually argue over can some1 replicate a pedal you can goop a pedal which i think is really cool I kind of want to do it in some for fun but you know goop comes off secret diodes can be read there's machinery for that what I'm getting at is guys don't get really hung up on a certain piece of gear that you can't afford being the ultimate tonal nirvana because I want to guarantee you something if you didn't like the clone clone that you played you're not gonna like the ruin because a good clone of something should sound exactly like the thing it's cloning number four germanium is better no it's not it's just not better it's different but it's not better so what is germanium some of you may not know germanium is a form of transistor that basically very primitive it's in very early devices in kind of the early age of electronics and here's a few they're real small they got three legs their little amplifiers and use them to amplify signal people really get hung up on the fact that they think germanium is better and there's good reason for thinking that because if you've ever played a real tone bender or a real fuzz face from back in the day it's a great sounding pedal these pedals were designed around those germanium parts we've heard them on the Zeppelin records we've heard Jimi Hendrix play them we were very familiar with it but it doesn't make it better and to kind of show you an example of that is you just saw the tone bender it's germanium then the big muff is silicon which is the alternative it's a more modern type of transistor not as rare but no one says the big muff sounds like crap because it's silicon so there's this weird double standard there you know germanium is better silicon sucks well you have to say the big muff sucks 10 doesn't really work out for you in that argument so here's the deal germanium is not better if germanium transistors are put in a crappy circuit a circuit needs to be designed around the type of transistor or the types of parts you're using and in that it'll sound good I can take a silicon transistor and make a fuzz that you'll love as a matter of fact most my fuzz's are silicon and you guys seem to love them because you're buying them I see them on your boards so don't say germanium is better it's just not true let's keep going myth number five surface mount parts are not as good as through-hole parts your you probably have seen this or you will see it if you dig far enough so here's here's the explanation through-hole parts we're talking about capacitors resistors diodes when you open up a pedal and look you see the parts well through-hole actually they have legs so here's the circuit board through-hole parts have legs and you put them in and they go through the holes in the board you clip them and solder them so through hole through the hole they're bigger parts then you have surface mount parts so surface mount parts are really small same exact part just smaller and so you have a circuit board and they kind of lay in their positions and heat an oven actually soldered them so the myth is that those surface mount parts are inferior they're not as good well I believed that until I went and did an experiment I was curious because I wanted to make my JHS products better and for a lot of reasons I finally took a shot I said I'm gonna make a Morning Glory that surface mount I want to hear it I want to compare it and if it's successful I'm gonna go surface mount well I got the prototype and it blew me away it was way less noisy sounded sonically identical and it was just a better made product let me show you so this is an old think it's 2010 Morning Glory this is before we even have the icon pretty old here's the inside so you see the bigger parts on the circuit board here this is the circuit board big capacitors big resistors and then here is a newer one new model its surface mount smaller parts they sound sonically identical one is just a better build quality quieter less problems and overall a better product you know I've had people say men and I hate service man I only play through-hole and they have a Strymon time line on their board it's like bro its surface mount you're on your iphone your iphone surface mount so yeah it's not it's not better Google's not better surface mounts not better it's two different ways of doing something and in my experience with my pedals and pedals that I've seen from other manufacturers surface mount is the better way to go for most applications in manufacturing for having a longer-lasting product and having lower noise and less issues so there you go don't be scared of surface mount don't believe the things you read on the internet I think George Washington said that in the 1300s alright myth number six is one that dates back a few decades and it's equally as big as the true-bypass thing probably now that I think about it and here's what the myth is the myth is that one op-amp or chip is better than another or you need to have the pedal with the special op-amp in it because it sounds better let me break this down first of all what is an op-amp and what is a chip some of you guys may not know I showed you the germanium transistors we talked about that it was an amplifier well an op-amp is an operational amplifier here's three on a breadboard they have eight legs you've probably seen something like this so different tube screamers through the ages have had different chipsets in them for instance here's an old original ts808 this is the one I used in the bonsai and it has the coveted four five five eight chipset in it here's a 1983 ts9 that I used in the bonsai and as the t a7 chip a lot of people don't like it because they claim it's not the magical chip the point I want to get out here is there is no magical chip a tubescreamer particularly and other pedals that have these claims attached to them when the clipping or the distortion in the circuit is done in the term soft clipping this is to screamers Bluesbreakers timmy's all kinds of pedals use soft clipping and when that's the case the op amp is not creating the overdrive the op amp is simply amplifying things in the circuit so when you end up with a pedal like a rat or a dod 250 that has what's called hard clipping maybe one day I'll do an episode on the difference in these but until now just trust me hard clipping is where you really really hear the op amp because you're actually distorting it to make Distortion but in something like a tube screamer that's just not the case you're not hearing that op amp so it's not magical it's actually not that important one of the only things that might matter is it might be a little noisy if the chip is kind of cheap but at the end of the day you can split hairs over this and go crazy it's just not a factor what I think happens to a lot of people is just say you got a ts808 you used to gig with it you had some good gigs and then a year later you're playing a ts9 it's in your rig your bands not as good you don't have the same amp you're having bad gigs whatever you start equating that this is worse than this but it's all in your head and there's a couple of videos I want to link to that really helped show this one of them is really excellent and it's from my friend Brian wampler of wampler pedals he has a video podcast used to go subscribe to that it's killer he breaks down the chips he kind of plays has a breadboard setup and it's just it's a really good video to show you this so we'll link to that and then there's one I'll link to if I can find it it's from Bob wild the creator of visual sound he did this way back in the day early YouTube he sets up a studio in Nashville invites all these session players in sets them up in a room and behind the wall he has a player playing as he changes op amps or doesn't change them and people out there are hearing things that aren't happening because it's so mental we talk ourselves into believing some of these myths when they're just absolutely not true so please don't get hung up on the fact that one op-amp is better than another it's just not the case play a pedal if it sounds good to you it's good just move on so one thing I want to do here before we head to record time is I want you to leave in the comments if you've ever really been hung up on one of these myths has it ever affected you in a way that you bought gear or didn't buy gear because you kept hearing these myths have you been tricked by them have you been persuaded I shared with you how the surface-mount thing kind of threw me off well I'd love for you to share and let's have an open and honest conversation in the comments about that today's record time is brought to you by none other than Drake Pete Drake the fabulous still guitar sound of Pete Drake still guitar instrumentals with that famous hit record sound tracks like the spook pleading my personal favorite play on words here track one is for pete's sake come on you know that's really clever there's a killer record an amazing artist that's really new to me a friend of mine called Mason Stoops he's an amazing guitarist out in LA I love everything he loves so when he put this up I went and checked it out so Apple music and Spotify has a lot of his records just prowl through then check this record out specifically if you can find it and then those comments leave me your favorite instrumental record I'm a huge fan of instrumental music and looking forward to seeing those comments but man I'm a big fan of this that is a wrap for today I hope you enjoyed this episode and I hope that it's useful to you I really want you guys to have the confidence to just go play guitar and have fun and not get so hung up on all these things that a lot of people get hung up on one thing that would be really fun is you know I blew through these topics I wanted this episode to not be six hours long so here's what I need you to do in that comment section basically cast your vote for what you'd like to see a full episode on if you're really curious about the true-bypass buffers they put that in there maybe I'll do an episode if you're more curious about another aspect that I talked about throw it in so cast your vote and I'll tally those up and do an episode on the one that wins the most comments until next time have a wonderful day and remember hit that like button if you enjoyed it subscribe to the channel and there is a bell icon hit that Bell and you'll be notified every Thursday when we drop a new episode have a wonderful day

Channel: JHS Pedals

Views: 1,120,459

Rating: 4.9230881 out of 5

Keywords: JHS, JHS Pedals, Guitar, Guitar Pedals, Electric Guitar, Guitar Effects, Guitar Player, Guitar Playing, Pedal Demo, Guitar Demo, New Pedals, New Guitar Pedals, Josh Scott, Guitar Gear, Music Gear, Guitar Tones, Pedal Tones, Good Guitar Tone, Best Guitar Tone, Best Electric Guitar Tone, Analog Guitar Tone, Guitar Sounds, JHS Guitar Pedals, JHS VLOG, 6 Pedal Myths, Guitar Myths, Pedal Myths, How to use Guitar Pedals, Pedal Vlog

Id: yEZ0yzswOt4

Length: 18min 56sec (1136 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 04 2018