I was looking for a volume boost pedal, but all of them were true bypass. I wanted something with a buffered bypass, since my Tele bass is passive. My other pedals are all true bypass, as are most boutique pedals.
So I wanted my boost pedal to be buffered for the long trip from my pedals back to my amp.
I found one by Tone Freak called the Buff Puff - clean boost with buffered bypass. Dave Friedman was involved in it, and I know him so I figgered it would be good.
But the Buff Puff is $169 so I searched about a bit more and found the More Louder by Cusack Music. This one's got one more: It offers clean boost, but also offers a switch that toggles between true bypass and buffered bypass. And it's $119.00.
This thing is almost perfect (I'll note the imperfection below) - plenty of clean boost, and my choice of buffered bypass for my Tele bass and true bypass for my Sadowsky and my old Carvin 5. I like the footswitch better too - no click.
The imperfect thing: For a bass player, it has wayyyy too much gain available. I don't think a bass man would ever have to turn this past 9:00. It's not a defect or fault though - it's really made for guitar players. But the Cusack folks may think about making a "More Louder Bass" or "More Bass" that has less gain, making more of the range on the dial useable. I'd buy one.
Just for kicks, I loaded up 45' of cables between the pedal and input - I plugged in my '68 Tele bass, and just switched back and forth between true and buffered bypass mode. The boost circuit was not engaged at all - I only flipped the toggle back and forth between bypass modes.
I played a few notes, stopped and changed the toggle, and played (approximately) the same ones again. And repeated a few times, in real time. No punches, splices, eq or any effects or anything.
Tele -> short patch wire to More Louder ->25' wire to Tuner -> 20' wire to input for a total of 45' of wires.
I won't bother saying which mode is first and second - it's pretty obvious.
For the record, I tried this with a short wire, and there was no difference in the sound. The tonal difference you'll hear is *because* of the pedal, but it's not *coming* from the pedal, if you know what I mean.
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/6582895/Sou...buffertest.mp3
Enjoy!
-James
