Second Set of Ears

I’ve got a reasonably sized pedal board as you can see from my guitar rig page.  Something alot of people take into account when they are purchasing a pedal is whether it is considered “true bypass” or not.   What’s interesting about this consideration is that it’s not so much about what the pedal does when it’s, but when its off.  When a stompbox in your signal chain is turned off.  Stompboxes in bypass are capable of coloring your sound even when they aren’t activated.  Many people prefer to employ pedals that use true bypass so that their signal stays as clean and true as possible, which is admirable.  Some people, however, appreciate the nuances that pedal circuitry can do to your sound when in bypass.  I wanted to write about this for two reasons.

1) to let people know about this issue in general.  In my pedal setup, only my Hardwire Delay/Looper pedal is claimed to be true bypass.  I will be interested to see how each pedal colors my sound by plugging them into my signal chain and testing them one at a time in bypass mode, which I will cover at a later date with a video.  That way if you are considering purchasing any pedals that I have in my setup you can be better informed.

2) I wanted to let everyone who might stop by here know about a site called Proguitarshop.com.  I am not at all affiliated with this site at this time other than I have purchased a pedal from them once before.  what’s nice about PGS is that they do video demos of the gear they sell, which is helpful when you can’t tryout the gear yourself in person.  I will be doing something similar, but take it one step further.  Nonetheless, this is a valuable resource that guitarists and guitar techies should take advantage of.  At PGS, a fellow by the name of Andy, who does video demos for PGS, also has a column on the PGS site titled Andy’s Corner.  Here I found him writing about two relevant things to secondsetofears.com.  His first post is talking about his own guitar rig, which is something I would like people to start doing here as well.  His second post to his column is one this topic of True Bypass.  Andy makes a decent argument for why true bypass isn’t always good and why coloring your signal chain can do wonders for your tone.  You can check out Andy’s corner here .  If you are required to sign up, I apologize.  Hopefully you are able to view the content without too much trouble.

How is secondsetofears.com different from PGS?  Why not just go to a place like that instead?  I am not against anyone using PGS, as I use it myself, among many other sites that I will talk about on here at some time or another.  The difference between this site and PGS is two-fold.  One, While PGS mentions what guitar and gear they use, they don’t mention the mic, cables, power, pre-amps, plug-ins, etc, that might be coloring the sound, just as we mentioned about in true bypass.  Coloring the sound can be a good thing.  In this case, it can be too good, because it can detract from the honesty of the gear you are trying to hear.  Here, every factor in the sound will be mentioned so you know exactly what you are hearing.  Secondly, secondsetofears.com is not limited to my gear setup.  PGS has an expansive inventory of guitar gear to demo, but a web community of musicians and audiophiles have a potentially infinite inventory.  You can post your gear demos here to help everyone be more informed.  Just be sure to be detailed in what you used to capture the sound and how you created the actual tones you are showing off.

This site is also not restricted to guitar gear as PGS is.  If you have a PA or recording setup or a drum kit you would like to show, its your prerogative.  This site is a network of musicians, audiophiles, and music techs that are able to learn from one another.  It would be quite pricey and painstaking to own every peace of musical equipment ever created, let alone knowing how to use it properly.  Here, anyone who can afford to adhere to the standard criteria is welcome to participate.  Stay tuned for those standard criteria so we can get this community rolling.

Ian

Over and Out