Tonebender MKII Clone / Pedal Order / Buffer

[fuzzy645]

My own little Tonebender clone is sounding great, and I'm totally loving it with my rig.    The only issue I am having is when I put another pedal in front of it that happens to have a buffer (such as a Tube Screamer), the MKII sounds bad, almost as if it is sputtering or dying.  If I put the Tube Screamer after the MKII, no problem at all, only when the buffered pedal is before the MKII do I have a problem. 

Any ideas on this?  I'm using the standard wiring circuit posted all over the internet and no mods of any kind.     Perhaps the best solution for me would be to just leave this as the first pedal in my board but I'm wondering if there are alternatives.

[therecordingart]

My loose understanding and crude explanation is that the Tonebender has a low input impedance, lower than that of your guitar, so the Tonebender loads your pickups. It relies on this to have the effect that it does. An ideal buffer has an infinite input impedance (so it doesn't load your pickups) and zero output impedance. A practical buffer doesn't quite do that, but the output impedance is still quite low and the loading effect of the Tonebender no longer exists (and doesn't function correctly).

Check out the pickup simulator at the AMZ site. Nothing more than using the primary of a $2 Mouser transformer as an inductor. That will allow you to put the Tonebender anywhere in your signal chain. You may want to rebuffer your signal after the Tonebender. I'm working on a box that does all of these things and more. I'll post soon once it is working.

[fuzzy645]

Wow, thanks that sounds like an awesome idea!  I will try that for sure.

[Gus]

You can try a series resistor at the input something like a 10K.

What mark2 schematic are you using?

[fuzzy645]

You can try a series resistor at the input something like a 10K.

What mark2 schematic are you using?

I'm using this from fuzzcentral



The only thing is I did modify a few of the resistor values.  The 100K at the base of Q1 was overkill and left very little swing in the attack pot. The fuzz was too over the top on 0, and gated on 10.  I saw another schematic that had a 10K on the base of Q1, so I tried that but it sounded too weak when the attack pot was on 0.  I then tried 22K and that was magic!!    For the bias resistor of Q2, fuzz central says 100K and that sounded fine. I tried it at 47K as posted on another schematic but the difference was subtle and 100K sounded a bit warmer.  Finally for the bias resistor of Q3, I used a 10K trimpot.

Oh, and the trannys are OC76 with gains ranging from 100 - 150 and leakage in mid 100's

Thanks!