TOP 6 PEDAL MYTHS
Introduction
Okay, I know the internet can be a negative place. Just look at the comment section of the average YouTube video. Heck, look at the comment section of an episode of The JHS Show (I’m good, but not perfect, and you’ll see plenty of comments loudly attesting to that fact).
This article isn’t meant to add to that negativity. Honestly, I just want to vent a bit. Friends vent to each other. That’s okay.
In this article, I want to break down the top six pedal myths that drive me bonkers. The ones that get under my skin, the ones that keep me up at night, the ones that just get to me. I’m just trying to educate the world on how pedals work (and how they do not work). I’m accomplishing something useful here. That’s positive, right?
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: me posting a video or an article with you, an actual human, on the other end. There’s only one downside to this amazing system: there are no obvious checks and balances on the information being put out. As a result, misinformation abounds.
Obviously, that’s a bigger subject for a longer blog, but I want to zero in on pedal myths. I see them on forums, I see people like you sincerely wanting to understand something, and for the answer someone quotes you a myth. As previously stated, this drives me crazy.
In this article, I want to walk you through it. I want to blast through the pedal myths and help you as a consumer. When you finish this article, you are going to be able to look at stuff in a more factual way and worry about what really matters: the skills and tips that help you play guitar better.
So let's jump right in.
#1: “True bypass is better than buffered."
Myth number one: "true bypass is better than buffered BOSS style bypass." The short answer? It's absolutely not true.
Let me break the differences down for you. For true bypass, picture an old Fulltone pedal. It has a foot switch. When you click the foot switch, you turn the pedal on and it makes a distortion sound. When you turn it off, it bypasses the circuit completely as if you were just going through a short patch cable. For buffered bypass, when the circuit is on, it is distorted. When you hit the switch, it is bypassed from the circuit through a buffer circuit.
Neither one is better. It completely depends on the way your guitar rig is set up and on each individual musician. I’ve seen super snooty pedal owners swear by true bypass and make these over-the-top claims about how much better it is...and then their guitar tone is horrible in bypass.
Because every foot of guitar cable adds an issue called capacitance, that capacitance is basically the same effect as barely rolling your tone knob back. So the more true bypass you have in your tone, the darker your signal becomes. But if you put a buffer in, it fixes the problem completely and doesn't sonically change anything except for the better.
That being said, neither one is better and you need a little bit of both. Go watch my “Why You Need A Buffer” JHS Show episode for more on this.
#2: "Boutique is better."
So, moving on number two, "Boutique is better." Eh, no. It’s not.
First off, let’s clarify: what is boutique? When I started in 2007, boutique meant something totally different than now. I would have defined it as a person or people building pedals one at a time, by hand, populating every little part and doing every aspect of the production in a way that is craft or small batch. This person or company would also be a little snarky, rude, and hard to deal with because they consider themselves “special”.
I remember being on a pedal builders panel in LA in 2012, someone asked me along with other builders Brian Wampler and Robert Keeley, "Do you like being a boutique builder?" And I remember thinking, "I don't even know that I am. I don't know what it means anymore." The questioner probably meant: “Do you like being a small pedal company that is ‘superior’ to a larger company?”, but honestly boutique has completely different definitions for different people.
For context, in that same year, a Chinese pedal company put out a fully digital and machine-made pedal line and used the tagline, "Boutique Tone." What does that even mean?
Here’s what I said at that panel: “If ‘boutique’ means being rude to my customers, having horrible customer service, having no warranty program, then I just don't want to be boutique. I want JHS to make great pedals, be reliable, and be really great to our customers.”
Here are two great examples: first, let’s look at the DOD FX53 classic tube overdrive, which I would say is absolutely the anti-boutique. If I were to throw this up on the internet and say, "Look at my boutique pedal," I would totally get roasted. But it’s still a fantastic product. Then you have the Timmy, made by my good friend Paul Cochrane. He lives just outside of Nashville and he builds every one of these at his house. I think Paul is actually staying true to the definition of boutique. They're amazing. He's done this forever.
But let me hasten to add: boutique (the Timmy) is definitely not better to me than a standard pedal (the DOD FX 53). They're both great products that I would use in totally different ways. So, say it with me: boutique is not better.
#3: “There's no way you can clone that pedal.”
Number three: "There's no way you can clone that pedal." In this case, I’m specifically referring to the Klon Centaur, but you can really say this about any other pedal.
Simply put: there's not a pedal on earth that you can't replicate, because people are smart. We live in the 2020s now. We have gone to the moon (or at least faked it very well). We sliced bread. We created handheld supercomputers. We have McDonald's delivery through Uber Eats. This is the level of genius minds that exist on this earth, but yet we say we can't copy a circuit that is based around one-hundred-year-old technology? Nah.
A pedal can be replicated, an amp can be replicated, because there's nothing magical about these pieces of gear. Even though we have memories attached to our gear, at the end of the day it’s a piece of hardware, not a Stradivarius. You can replace it and you can replicate it.
For those that really don’t want the customer to know how the sausage gets made, you can goop a pedal. Basically, gooping is covering a circuit board with black epoxy goop to hide the secret magical design in said product. There are mixed reactions to this in the pedal world, but I think it’s really cool. If you want to know how these pedals work, you have to take it to pieces. It’s like playing ‘Operation’ with a pedal instead of Cavity Sam. It shows that, at the end of the day, nothing is totally secret in pedal making. If someone wants to know how the pedal works, they’ll figure it out. Secret diodes can be read; there's machinery for that. There are entire departments in electronics companies devoted to reverse engineering competing gear; this has gone on as long as electronics have existed.
Here’s the short version: don't get hung up on a certain piece of (crazy expensive) gear being the ultimate tonal Nirvana. Give the clone a shot. At least it will give you a decent idea if you really want to pay for the original, because a good clone of something should sound exactly like the thing it's cloning. If you don't like a Klon clone, you aren't going to like a Klon.
#4: "Germanium is better."
Number four: "Germanium is better."
No, it's not. It's different, but it's not better.
So what is germanium? Germanium is a primitive type of transistor material found in very early devices used in the early age of electronics. Later on these Germanium type devices became extinct with the invention of Silicon transistors, as Silicon was more stable than Germanium and easier to produce products with. Transistors are basically small amplifiers with three legs that you can use to amplify the signal. They are a building block to many circuits.
People really get hung up on the fact that they think germanium transistors are better, and there's good reason for thinking that. 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, and both of those pedals were designed around germanium parts. We've heard them on the Zeppelin records; we've heard Jimi Hendrix play them. We're very familiar with it, but it doesn't make it better.
Let me point out the weird double standard on this: 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. See where I’m going with this? If you know germanium is better and silicon sucks, you have to say the Big Muff sucks.
Good luck getting that Ted Talk off the ground.
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 of my Fuzzes are silicon, and you guys seem to love them, as they sell like crazy. Numbers don’t lie, people.
Basically, don't say germanium is better, because it's just not true. Germanium is just different.
#5: "Surface-mount parts aren’t as good as through-hole parts."
Myth number five: "Surface-mount parts are not as good as through-hole parts."
False.
So, when I say ‘through-hole parts’ we're talking about capacitors, resistors, diodes, etc. When you open up a pedal and look at the circuit board, you see that through-hole parts actually have legs. You put in these parts and they go through the pad holes in the board. You fit them and solder them. These are the bigger, more traditional parts that we all know and say we love.
Surface-mount parts are the same exact parts, just smaller. Think about the tiny parts you see in a computer or smart phone after you drop it down a flight of stairs. When you look at the circuit board, they lay in their positions on top of the circuit board where they were soldered in a large robotic oven.
The myth is that those surface-mount parts are inferior, and I’ll be honest, I believed that.
...until I went and did an experiment. I was curious because I wanted to make my JHS products better, so I finally took a shot and I said, "I'm going to make a Morning Glory with surface-mount parts. I want to hear it, I want to compare it, and if it's successful I'm going to go surface-mount.” Well, I built a prototype and it blew me away. It was way less noisy, sounded sonically identical, and was frankly just a better-made product.
Let’s see the difference in the JHS episode of the same name where I compare the two Morning Glory circuit boards. The 2010 Morning Glory uses through-hole parts. You can see the bigger parts on the circuit board there, big capacitors, big resistors. I compared it with a new model made with smaller surface-mount parts. They sound sonically identical. One is just a better quality, quieter, has less problems, and overall a better product.**
**Spoiler: the better quality pedal is the surface-mount.
This myth really gets on my nerves. Sometimes I hear people say, "Man, I hate surface-mount. I only play through-hole," and yet they have a Strymon TimeLine on their board? Educate yourself, son. That is surface-mount. Even your iPhone that you are reading this on is surface-mount.
Surface-mount and through-hole parts are simply two different ways of crafting gear. 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 as it tends to make a longer lasting product, has lower noise, and creates less issues.
So there you go. Don't be scared of surface-mount and don't believe everything you read on the internet.**
**Fairly sure that George Washington said that around the 1300s.
#6: "A pedal with the special op-amp or chip in it sounds better."
All right. Number six dates back a few decades and might be the most widely-believed myth on this list: “A pedal with the special op-amp or chip in it sounds better."
Let me break this down. First of all, what is an op-amp? An op-amp is an operational amplifier, which is typically placed on a breadboard. This can be used a few different ways in a pedal. First, when the clipping or the distortion is done in the circuit of the pedal (Tube Screamers, Bluesbreakers, Timmy’s, etc.) we use the term soft clipping. In this situation, the op-amp is not necessary in creating the overdrive effect. The op-amp is simply amplifying the instrument and the circuit. Second, when you end up with a pedal like a RAT or a DOD 250, it uses hard clipping, which basically means that you are more likely to hear the op-amp because the op-amp itself is usually experiencing “rail clipping” as it pushes signal into the clipping section on the output of the circuit.
The most legendary argument for the sound of a chip/opamp is with the Tube Screamer. Different Tube Screamers through the ages have had different chip sets in them. For instance, the original TS808 (which I used in the Bonsai) has the coveted 4558 chip set in it. I also used the 1983 TS9, which has the TA7-chip. A lot of people don't like the TA-7 because they claim it's "not the magical chip." It sounds great to me.
The main point I’m trying to drive home here is that there is no magical chip.
In my experience, your feelings about the pedal (or the chip) usually circle back to your history with it. If you got a TS808 in 1982, you used to gig with it, and you had some good gigs, your brain is naturally going to make the connection: The TS808 is the reason my gigs were so smoking back then. Then ten years later, you're playing a TS9 instead, and because of outside factors (your band quality being lower, not having the same amp, getting saddled with bad gigs, etc), your brain does the same trick in reverse: The TS9 is the reason my gigs have sucked this year.
The same thing happens with athletes who wear the same pair of lucky shorts to every championship game, just in case. We talk ourselves into believing some of these myths, when they're absolutely not true.
Basically, here’s my advice: don't get hung up worrying whether one op-amp is better than another. It's just not the case.
Conclusion
I want you guys to have the confidence to just go play guitar and have fun. Sounds easy, right? The trick is to not get so hung up on these myths. Don’t overthink it. Play your guitar. Try the pedal. If you like it, awesome. If not, try something else.
Just play a pedal. If it sounds good to you, it's good. Case closed.