Tone Hammer degrades sound quality when bypassed?

[smeet]

Hey all, I bought an apparently mint Tone Hammer used a while ago, and although I think its eq and drive sound great, I noticed that even when bypassed, it makes my bass sound worse than when it is not in the signal path. There seems to be less low end and less punch to the sound. It's not drastic, but at least solo, I definitely hear it.

Has anybody else noticed this? For such a high end box, that seems very weird to me. Is my unit defective?

[Zitch]

I havent noticed any sound degradation with mine, ive only had it for 3 weeks.

[Darkglass]

Mhh, are you using a passive or active bass? I don't know if the pedal is true bypass or not... in case it would be, and you would be using a passive bass, the degradation in the bypassed signal would be due to the extra cable (parasit impedances producing a low pass filter due to lack of impedance adapter)... any buffered bypass pedal, or active bass should avoid any degradation with long cables...

Now, If your bass is active, and you still notice the degradation, I don't know what could be causing it, since I have never seen any schems of that pedal...

Cheers

Doug.

[smeet]

It's an active/passive bass (Sadowsky), seems to happen in either mode. Mogami cables, tried switching cables. Even if it's true bypass, the difference is too great to be from bypassing one high-quality pedal.

I guess I should contact Aguilar? I just hate to incur the expense of repairing it since it probably can't be diagnosed over the phone... Maybe I'll make some recordings of the difference.

[Eric!]

Originally Posted by smeet

I guess I should contact Aguilar? I just hate to incur the expense of repairing it since it probably can't be diagnosed over the phone... Maybe I'll make some recordings of the difference.

If you do, tell them to add an AGS volume/strength control

[RCCollins]

you appear to have a lot of pedals. where was the tone hammer in your chain?

[smeet]

Originally Posted by Eric!

If you do, tell them to add an AGS volume/strength control

But, but, why would ANYBODY want a weird esoteric feature like THAT???

Originally Posted by RCCollins

you appear to have a lot of pedals. where was the tone hammer in your chain?

Sadly, it was the only pedal in the chain.

[bongomania]

Aggie pedals use an electronic bypass that "acts like" true bypass in that it lets your signal pass through if the power to the pedal fails. I didn't observe any degradation in the one that I tested, but maybe they have made some improvements to the circuit from one model to the next, or maybe yours has a part that's subpar or going bad.

The good news is that Boonshoft is pretty responsive if you complain.

[smeet]

Hopefully he will be responsive even though I am not the original owner...

Just occurred to me that I should try it without a battery/power to see if the failsafe bypass sounds different, maybe that would be a clue?