True Bypass

Let me start of by mentioning that true bypass is OK in the right place and if your pedals suck tone a lot, however most pedals aren’t true bypass, and this is for a very good reason, simply it's not usually the best solution.

This may be a good point to introduce the idea of a buffer. A buffer may be viewed as a simple electronic box that has an input and an output. The input presents any circuit connected to it with high impedance, and it presents any circuit connected after it with a low impedance output. This is a fundamental building block in the world of electronics. It allows circuits to be added without them interfering with each other's operation, the high input impedance will also help to take the entire signal and pass it along the chain.

True bypass, if used extensively lengthens your signal line which in turn degrades your signal dramatically by adding more and more parasitic capacitance to your signal line. The best and most common solution is a high input impedance buffers before and after all of your pedals, which breaks up the long chain and passes the signal. This is easily done if you buy pedals with a high quality buffer when in bypass mode and keep any true bypass pedals in between the buffers. A common complaint is that high impedance buffers add brilliance to guitar tone, however it is more often the case that this is just how your guitar sounds, you can use the tone control on your guitar to cut high frequencies you don't want, but you can't use it to boost!

Pedals (when switched to bypass) may suck tone, the reason is generally due to a poor buffer or bypass configuration. The solution should not be to make the pedal true bypass unless it's really necessary or desired. Some people may buy pedals that suck tone and make them true bypass to compensate, which is ok, but it is important to remember that if you buy a cheap pedal then you have to expect to compromise on the parts inside the pedal. A cheap pedal will suck tone, and that's a consequence of cheap parts and cutting costs in the design process. If you buy good pedals, then converting them to true bypass may be pointless. In some cases if you make a pedal true bypass the quality will be greatly reduced, which is the opposite of what was intended.

The main aim for any guitarist is to use a short a signal line as possible to reduce parasitic capacitance sucking tone. If many pedals are used it may not be desirable to convert the majority to true bypass. Buffers are a solution to a long signal chain, true bypass only exacerbates the problem.

It should be noted that a true bypass mod may not be as simple as some people make out. for example, the dano mini series of pedals tend to use a much more complex logic switching system which uses a momentary footswitch, it's basically impossible to make this sort of pedal true bypass unless you give the switching mechanism a complete overhaul, which would almost inevitably involve rehousing the pedal with new components.



Here are two pedal boards, all of the pedals are switched to bypass mode.
in the top pedal chain you can see the guitar goes straight into a buffered pedal, and then on into a a dotted box which could contain any pedals, at the end there is another buffered pedal, these buffers help to pass the signal etc as i mentioned in the original post.

In the second pedal chain there is a series of pedals all using true bypass. The red line follows the signal path, as you can see, the longer this gets the longer your effective guitar lead is. The wires inside the box also pass close to active electronic components, as active components are powered in pedals even in bypass mode. This may also add noise to your signal.

Obviously, as with everything there are pro's and cons for both types of pedal. You may notice that the buffered pedals have the signal line connected to the "effect circuit" even in bypass, and this is where some "tone sucking" may occur. But if it is implemented properly this won't be noticeable.