| Most of our pedals have buffered bypass, but our new EQ pedal is true bypass, so we have studied this problem extensively in the lab.
Popping is hard to control with true bypass, because there is no way to know or control the signal on the input (including any DC offset voltage). You can certainly add a 1M resistor (and/or DC blocking capacitor), but each time you do this you are decreasing the input impedance of the signal chain and increasing the likelihood of "tone sucking". The whole point of true bypass is to have nothing in the signal chain. Adding in components is not consistent with this objective. Good grounding and good supplies is good practice, but it cannot remove the uncertainly of the input signal from the equation.
With a buffered bypass circuit one can add in a trick to make the signals match each other when the switching happens, hence there is little of no click. It is very effective, and is a real advantage of a buffered bypass approach.
The best solution is to offer both true bypass and click-less buffered bypass in one pedal. TC is doing this now on some pedals, and we plan to do this in the future as well. It puts the decision of buffered or true bypass in the hands of the user. Depending on the number of pedals in the signal and type of pedals, the user can then choose which is appropriate.
If you only have one pedal creating problems, the 1M resistor sounds like a simple and effective solution. |