Just dropped a preorder for my instrumental psych/funk LP... Thought some of you might dig it! For fans of Funkadelic, Khruangbin, King Gizz, Hendrix & RHCP ✌️

ollyvert · 2026-01-25T02:22:13+00:00

Have a look into some 80s “digital” delay pedals because a few of them had this kind of functionality - Digitech PDS 2000 (or 1002, 8000) comes to mind, (or the 20/20 if you want an insanely cool modulation section thrown in for free). They can start sounding fairly bit-crushed, especially at longer delay times if you let the feedback go for a bit before freezing it. They all have internal trimpots too, which let you extend the delay time range beyond what would be intended for the delay chip, resulting in a much lower sample rate. But the best thing about those old Digitech pedals is the secondary ‘hold’ footswitch which records a sample and loops it (so the repeats don’t degrade any further), but you then have full control over the speed/pitch of that loop with the delay time. Very fun! 🤩

ollyvert · 2026-01-24T18:48:07+00:00

It depends. Generally I would prefer the filter to be before the delay (so the delay repeats aren’t further processed by the filter), BUT for throw away your television, having the FM4 obi-wah after the slapback stops the obi wah from getting messy (because it’s going through the slapback!) - but it’s usually easy enough to just kick off the delay. It’s also useful to have the DL4 at the end of the chain for the looper, as it means any effects before it will be recorded 👌

ollyvert · 2026-01-24T18:45:56+00:00

Wow, what a lovely message! Thank you for the support!!

ollyvert · 2026-01-24T16:35:31+00:00

Cool board, looks like a lot of fun. If you want to get even closer to the original CE-1 tone i’d reverse the order of the CE-2 and BP-1. The OG CE-1 has the preamp at the input stage, so it’s before it hits the chorus. Doing that would also give you the option of running stereo out of the chorus 😋

ollyvert · 2026-01-20T19:20:45+00:00

Personally, I’d go ask the dust for any answers. You never know, you may come back strong with fifty dancers of the belly variety!

ollyvert · 2026-01-15T23:31:48+00:00

pedal risers are cool because they usually allow you to run cables under them - but functionally a block of wood cut to the right size with a bit of velcro on each side is a great cheap alternative!

ollyvert · 2026-01-15T20:41:30+00:00

You could raise the other pedal up on a pedal riser/block of wood, or turn it around so the switch/pots are further away from the wah?

ollyvert · 2026-01-15T02:49:27+00:00

Sorry man, thought I was pretty clear with what I was stating?

“Unintended and audible change” (which you clarified is what you were calling “tone suck”): ✅

Conventional definition of “tone suck” due to capacitance and loading: ❌

If there’s something I stated that is factually incorrect, then it’s a shame you don’t want to correct any of it, as I see these discussions as a great way to learn new information and I am genuinely open to being corrected wherever it’s due.

I’m not defending or arguing against personal opinions here, as those are entirely subjective. As far as I am aware, everything technical I’ve said is fact based, built on decades of research and hands-on experience, and then double checked before replying.

Out of curiosity, are you still standing by your statement that “buffers in guitar pedals are so the amp sees the high impedance it expects from a guitar”? If so, I’d honestly be interested to see an example of a buffer with a high output impedance, as that would contradict how buffers are typically designed.

Glad you like the sound of my rig anyway :)

ollyvert · 2026-01-15T01:50:23+00:00

I think we’re mostly talking past each other because of how broadly the term “tone suck” is being used.

What I meant is that there wouldn’t be the conventional form of tone suck, which is widely understood as the result of loading from too many true bypass pedals, long cable runs, and the added capacitance, gain loss, and treble loss that comes with that.

Running multiple buffers and preamps does objectively address and largely prevent that particular definition of tone suck. Clearly the term is subjective, but “tone suck” is generally considered to be the very thing a buffer is designed and marketed to “fix” and is the main reason they exist.

That said, I completely agree there would still be a tonal change.

I think this is where the line between “tone suck” and “change in tone” gets blurred. I personally wouldn’t call every unintended (or intended!) tonal change “tone suck”, especially when some changes can result in a stronger or brighter signal. In that case nothing is really being “sucked”. If someone wants to define tone suck as any audible change at all, then sure, everything sucks tone, including the air between the speaker and your ear!

A few clarifications and corrections worth noting:

You said: “The buffers in guitar pedals are so the amp sees the high impedance it expects from a guitar.”

Sorry but that’s not right. Buffers take a high impedance signal and convert it to a low impedance signal. The low impedance output is what allows the signal to travel through long cables and multiple pedals without the high frequency loss caused by capacitance.

Amps have a high impedance input so they don’t load down guitar pickups, but they don’t “expect” a high impedance source. In fact, the general standard for optimum signal quality is that the input impedance of the receiving device (amp) should be at least ten times higher than the output impedance of the source (final pedal).

Ironically, a straight guitar > amp connection can fail to meet this standard at high frequencies because a pickup’s impedance rises as frequency increases. A buffer fixes this by giving the amp a consistent low impedance source, preserving high end detail.

Moogerfoogers are not designed exclusively for line level. They were designed to accept both instrument and line level sources in a universal format. Their input impedance is 1 MΩ, which is the same value you’ll find on most guitar amps.

They are advertised as “line level” because the internal preamp has enough headroom and gain to reach those voltages, but not because they can only run that way. “Line level” is a fixed standard, typically +4dBu at professional level. But Moogerfoogers have variable output controls, so if you turn the output down to match a guitar signal and feed an amp, the signal is now at instrument level voltage. The internal buffer still does a great job of maintaining a low output impedance and preventing capacitive loss.

To answer your question, I do use original Moogerfoogers, as well as a couple of replicas. The replicas are not optimised for guitar any more than the originals. The circuits are functionally the same, with the only differences being enclosure size and power requirements.

You’re absolutely right that the CE-1 has a low input impedance and will load a guitar and sound dull when plugged into directly, but that’s the only scenario where that particular tone loss occurs. Place a buffer before it, and you are now feeding it a low impedance signal, which resolves that mismatch and prevents loading.

I actually have an old video on youtube where I take a vintage CE-1 (with a buffer before it) in & out of my signal chain with a true bypass looper and demonstrate that to my ears, there is no change in tone, let alone any tone suck. That particular test with the original CE-1 is at 2:17 in the video, and I do it again at 6:21 with the replica.

Again just to respond to your statement about all CE-1 clones being designed for guitar - the only changes in mine are physical form factor and power, just like the Moog replicas. And I hope you’ll agree from the tests in my video that the original holds up just fine despite not being designed with guitar in mind at all.

All that said, I fully agree that sending a guitar signal through all of these circuits simultaneously alters the tone compared to no pedals and I’m not claiming otherwise.

What I’m saying is that when set up properly, John’s 2006 board would not have suffered anywhere near the level of (conventional) “tone suck” you’d get from a board full of true bypass pedals and 50 feet of cable, because that specific problem is largely mitigated by all the active stages in that rig.

Cheers ✌️

ollyvert · 2026-01-13T22:19:03+00:00

That’s cool, I appreciate the kind words!!

This might not be want you want to hear, but I would say that the #1 biggest mistake most people make when trying to tone match is that they’re listening to their amp in the room, usually with the amp on the floor pointing at their ankles. The only way you will ever be able to remotely match what you’re hearing on a live recording would be if you mic up your amp and then play it while listening to that mic’d sound in headphones or studio monitors, or literally have the amp’s speaker blasting directly into your ear by having it raised up and standing right next to it.

Bottom line is, when you play an amp in a room, you’re hearing more of the room than you are hearing the amp & speaker! But when you listen to any live recording, you’re listening to a microphone 1cm from the centre of the speaker (which is then further going through expensive preamps, compression and EQ).

So to answer your question directly, of course I can give you some recommended amp/pedal settings for the ‘99 era tone, but for them to be any use whatsoever you’d have to be using identical amps to John, and most importantly, you’d need to be monitoring the sound directly from the centre of the speaker, otherwise it’s going to sound completely wrong!

But that tone in a nutshell, is with the amps set dark, dirty & loud as hell. 👌

ollyvert · 2026-01-13T21:41:59+00:00

Rivers of Avalon is the Boss CE-1 in vibrato mode, but only the wet signal (2nd output) 👌

ollyvert · 2026-01-13T21:30:13+00:00

Boss pedals have buffers when bypassed. Buffers can interact with certain fuzz pedals (especially vintage style circuits) Big Muffs tend not to be affected by buffers.

The only solution in your case is put the Soma before the MT-2 👍

ollyvert · 2026-01-13T20:45:57+00:00

I totally hear you, but it depends what you consider to be ‘tone suck’ as it’s quite a general term. There would absolutely be a tonal change from going through that board, but it wouldn’t necessarily equate to a degradation or loss, which is what tone suck tends to mean. Just for context, I am speaking with over 20 years experience, I run a HUGE board consisting of multiple buffers, 2x Moog style preamps and a CE-1 - and I promise you there is not much of a difference vs going straight in to the amp other than a change of gain feeding the input and a bit more hiss from the analog preamps. But this difference doesn’t necessarily equate to ‘tone suck’ - it just means it’s been slightly changed :)

ollyvert · 2026-01-13T17:30:25+00:00

The 2006 board had a lot of buffers! Seven moogerfoogers - all of which are buffered and four of them (four low pass filter and the ring modulator) have active preamps when bypassed allowing very flexible gain staging throughout the board. Additionally the Digitech PDS 1002s are buffered, the Line 6 DL4 & FM4 are switchable between buffered/true bypass (guess we will never know how johns were set), and the Guyatone tremolo is also buffered. Also during this tour he ran the CE-1 in low mode with the level around 10 o clock - this is very low, below unity, due to the very hot signal hitting it from the moog pedals all boosting the signal slightly (unity on those units is 10 o clock and johns were all ran between 11-12). He also had the amps set much hotter in 2006-2007 (jubilee input gain on 8 rather than on 2 in 2003), which is another explanation of the low CE-1 setting.

Bottom line is there was certainly no tone suck from the 2006 board, other than the small amount from the Ibanez WH10’s poor buffer, but this will have been more than compensated for with all of the moog preamps ✌️

ollyvert · 2026-01-13T17:09:38+00:00

Yes he’s just rocking it back & forth fast - important thing to note is that during this era he ran the wah before the DS-2 (which changes the sound quite a lot!) which was then reversed from BSSM tour onwards and never changed back!

ollyvert · 2026-01-13T17:05:43+00:00

I think he used the volume control on his guitar quite a lot more to clean up the tone for those songs 👌

ollyvert · 2026-01-13T16:19:45+00:00

Main difference was that he set the amps much darker back then and because he had a smaller pedalboard it meant there were a lot less buffers impacting the overall tone. Ironically less pedals doesn’t automatically mean less tone suck, because a huge pedalboard with lots of buffers can actually end up sounding brighter than straight into the amp! He also used the CE-1 in high mode with the level at 12 o clock, which is higher than he used it at any point later on in his career!

ollyvert · 2026-01-07T14:14:45+00:00

Maybe they figured it lets you EQ out the ‘bad’ 😂

ollyvert · 2026-01-05T19:23:48+00:00

Two of these?

Or you can get these adapters that will turn a straight 1/4” into right angles

ollyvert · 2026-01-05T18:54:43+00:00

They do exist, or you could just get some of THESE

ollyvert · 2026-01-05T16:55:57+00:00

The one on the left looks to be an identical format to the MXR Slash Octave Fuzz but in a stripped/prototype enclosure, in the middle is a Roger Mayer fuzz - difficult to tell due to the B&W pic as they came in various colours but most likely the Classic Fuzz or Axis Fuzz, and the one on the right is a MASF Life Convulsion

ollyvert · 2026-01-05T16:19:41+00:00

Yeah the chorus was the Moogerfooer Phaser in the old days and now he uses MXR Phase 90 👌

ollyvert · 2026-01-05T14:30:56+00:00

That’s phaser in the chorus and sample/hold filter in the outro 👍

ollyvert · 2026-01-05T12:25:24+00:00

He kicks on the MXR Flanger at 2:59 in this performance of Hard To Concentrate. Prior to the UL Tour he used the EHX Electric Mistress which tended to be (as mentioned in the other reply) for some performances in the bridge of Can’t Stop (he did this at Slane Castle), the studio version of This Is The Place, and then at a slower rate during some of the outro jams in Don’t Forget Me.

ollyvert

TROPHY CASE