Looking for some pedals that won't suck tone. After reconfiguring my board and removing/re-adding some pedals I've noticed that a few were killing my guitar's tone.
I need a reverb, a tremolo & a delay, preferably true-bypass. I've been using an EHX Holy Stain (for reverb, and sometimes tremolo. Noisy, and colors my tone way too much!), a Boss DD-5 & DD-3 (maybe I should have them modded for true bypass/treble cut), and a Line 6 Verbzilla (super tone sucker but nice reverbs).
What do you all like & use?

What do you want from the pedals? What level of versatility? what music are you playing?

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I'm using empress pedals for delay and tremolo. Plus I've got an Eventide ModFactor that also does trem. Those definitely qualify as great. Soon to add a Dr. Scientist Radical Red Reverberator to satisfy my lust for big, cavernous reverb spaces.

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- IAN C. -
Rig: PRS | Schecter USA | Gibson | Axe-Fx II | empress effects
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My understanding is that the Verbzilla becomes less of a tonesucker when you switch the trails off. That said, even with trails on, I don't find it to be too bad on tone. I know that some people are way more anal (I bet that gets censored by the filter) about these things than I am.

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Current rig: Les Paul Classic (Texas BBQ set and fine tuning tailpiece) or Les Paul Studio > SD Pickup Booster > PT-100 > Original Cry Baby > MXR Dynacomp > TS9DX > MT-2 > CH-1 > Stereo Pulsar > NYC Small Stone > Deluxe Memory Man > PDS-1002 > Verbzilla > Ampeg Reverberocket (R12R)

Carl martin make a really nice tremolo (surf trem) and delay (red repeat) with true bypass. simple and effective retro-styled effects. also their delayla is supposed to kick ass, but it was too rich for my blood. heard good things about the mxr carbon copy, too.

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i really like my carbon copy. good analog delay with some modulation on it. only $150 too, so that's not too bad. i also like my rv-3 for reverb. i really want an rv-2, but don't have any issue with my 3.

are you gonna sell your verbzilla???

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I was really impressed by the Digitech Hardwire series. The reverb had a lot of usable stuff and the spring reverb was spot on. The Delay was your typical run of the mill digital, but most digitals are like that to me. I only use mine for slap echo now a days. They are both true bypass. As for tremolo, you cant go wrong with a Voodoo Lab!

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can't you spend all the money you would selling and then buying on a Loooper style box?

For delay, I'd go DMM. I love mine. I also really dig my Red Witch Pentavocal trem. Those two pedals sound good together. I usually use the spring reverb on my amp.

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Marshall echohead is a nice true bypass delay and had quite cheaply second hand.
Maybe the EHX pulsar for a tremolo? Or the behringer clone of the boss pan tremolo

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"...We should be wasting that space with another discussion about something truly useful, like tits or religion or something......." - Fiveways

Can you really hear a difference in the tone from your buffered pedals? Can you really?

It's fairly rare that a pedal has a buffer so bad that it makes an audible difference (my GCB95 Crybaby is the only pedal with a buffer circuit bad enough to make any real difference to my board - I think some of the behringer stuff is poorly buffered too).

If you have passive pickups and run a bunch of true bypass stuff, you're looking at some high end loss anyway - from driving all of that cable. A pedal with a good buffer (the higher the impedance, the better) does more good than harm to your tone in most cases.

Maybe you can hear the difference, and if you can then that's cool... but I think people get FAR too carried away with the whole true bypass obsession.

Of course, once you are playing at gig volumes with a bunch of other instruments it doesn't matter one little bit either way anyway, because whatever subtle difference that is there is lost.

Just ask yourself before you spend a bunch of money (or better yet, get a friend to help you do a blind test) whether you really can hear the difference or whether you just think you can.

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Facepalm Death

Dunlop TS1 is a good trem

I believe you have to find them used though

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I don't believe the hype, and hence none of my 9 or so pedals are TB: and the treble loss is ~2 units of the treble dial. It's very audible, and no one pedal is responsible as far as i can tell.

I run a mix of TB and buffered pedals in my chain - TB Crybaby > MI Audio BnB v2 (think always on Z Vex SHO plus a boost switch - obv not TB)> MXR Super Comp (not TB) > MI Audio Blue Boy Deluxe (TB) > MI Audio Crunch Box (TB) > Boss TU2 (not TB) > Boss DD20 (not TB) > EHX Small Stone (not TB) > EHX Holier Grail (not TB).

I own a TB looper and have on several occasions hooked up all of these pedals into one loop to compare the difference between having all of them in the chain and having them all bypassed and the difference in tone is just barely audible.

I don't bother running the TB looper because the tone loss is only evident when you sit somewhere quiet, with the amp up reasonably loud and A/B to hear the comparison. I never plug in through my pedals and lament the sound I am getting. The only thing I ever run it for is if I want to switch off multiple pedals at once.

Hides-His-Eyes, I think that your setup would more likely be improved by putting a high impedance buffer first in your chain. How much cable is between your amp and guitar including patch cables and stuff?

Although if you are losing that much treble... you might have a couple of pedals interacting weirdly (wah and fuzz pedals often don't like buffered inputs and are frequently responsible for this problem). These pedals like to go right after the guitar and can sound strange when you put a buffered pedal in front.

Not saying that any of you are wrong, just trying to offer some alternative explanations for what you're hearing. What pedal chains are you guys running, out of interest?

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Facepalm Death

It might honestly just be an abundance of cheap bypass for me:

Bespeco Volume
Behringer tuner (have tried subbing it out, didn't make a noticable difference)
Boss OC3
Ibanez TS7 tubescreamer
Danelectro tuna melt
DOD DFX 9
Line6 Verbzilla
Akai Headrush

There are some cheap cables in there as well that i need to be rid of.