A few days ago we were having a conversation with a rig builder who uses a lot of RJM gear. The conversation turned to how confused most guitarists are about buffers and tone as well as how many myths are out there.

With the release of our newest product, the Tone Saver, we think it is time to do a bit of Buffer/Tone Myth-Busting.

First, take this quick quiz below and discover if you are a tone and buffer genius or myth-educated newbie!

(True or False)
1. Buffers “step” on your tone.

2. Buffers are boosters

3. Buffers make your tone sound sterile

4. Buffers are digital

5. Buffers cause noise or make the tone unnatural

6. True bypass is better than a buffer

7. All buffers are like the buffers found in boss pedals

8. Buffers are only needed in systems with long cable runs.

9. Buffers can not be used in an fx loop

10. Rigs only ever need a maximum of one buffer.

Answers (scroll down)

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1. Buffers “step” on your tone.
False. The truth is that it is completely the opposite. A well-designed buffer preserves tone. The whole purpose of a buffer is to prevent the loss of tone through all your cables and true bypass pedals.

2. Buffers are boosters
False. The intent of a buffer isn’t to make the signal louder but to make the signal stronger. Most buffers do come with a boost feature and that has likely lead to confusion.

3. Buffers make your tone sound sterile
False. A well-designed buffer doesn’t make tone sound sterile. If you have sterile tone, you have a bad buffer.

4. Buffers are digital and digital is bad
False. Buffers are actually 100% analog.

5. Buffers cause noise or make the tone unnatural
False. A well-designed buffer does not cause noise or make the tone unnatural. A well-designed buffer doesn’t sound like it is there. It is preventing tone loss. A buffer is not supposed to change the tone at all. Keeps tone as natural as possible. It counteracts the other bad things you have in rig.

6. “True Bypass” is better
False. True bypass and buffers really work together. True bypass is good for pedals because you don’t want all your pedals altering tone all the time. Some pedals even when bypassed can still affect tone negatively. The buffer is a way to deal with that and keep the bypass pedals from affecting your tone.

True bypass pedals are better than not having true bypass pedals but the idea is to have your guitar sounding like it is plugged straight into your amp when all your pedals are off. A combo of true bypass and buffer is the closest you’re going to get to plugging into your amp.

7. All buffers are like the buffers found in those in the popular mass-market pedals
False. Buffers in most of the popular mass-market pedals not well-designed. They will definitely alter tone. Don’t let those popular products fool you into thinking all buffers are the same. They aren’t.

8. Buffers are only needed in systems with long cable runs.
False. Not necessarily. The longer the cable, the more dramatic the change. But as soon as you add anything to your rig, you start losing tone. If you add a pedal, you add a second cable, and every time you add another pedal, you add yet another cable. You start to lose tone right away so a buffer helps in small rigs too.

9. Buffers cannot be used in an fx loop
False. It depends on your effects loop design. You can always use a buffer in fx loops but how much effect it has depends on your fx loop, cables, effects and everything. There are some fx loops that are better than others.

Our buffer (the Tone Saver) is really good for an fx loop because it runs at 18v internally and can handle the hotter signal coming out of fx loop. It will likely improve tone depending on the quality of everything else you are using.

10. Rigs only ever need a maximum of one buffer.
False. Like everything else it depends on your rig and what you are running. You may even need more than a few.

Score Yourself!

If you scored 10 right: You are a TONE MASTER! Congratulations on not falling for all the myths out there.

If you scored a 5 to a 9: You are getting there with your tone but with just a bit more info you’ll be a tone master very soon.

If you scored 0-4: Sorry, you haven’t done well on the Tone/Buffer test but if you study the answers above, you can impress your friends by correcting their tone too and misconceptions!

If you are wondering if your tone would improve by adding a buffer, then why not try the Tone Saver in your own rig and see if it helps. RJM has a 30-day money back guarantee.

You can get more information on the Tone Saver on the blog post below or buy it now from our shopping cart or find a dealer close to you.

Can you do us a favor? We’d love to know how well you did on the quiz if you are brave enough to tell us Did you already know all of this or did you find out something that surprised you? Please post a comment.

The Tone Saver is the same audio buffer circuit found in our high end audio switching products such as the Effect Gizmo and the Rack Gizmo, but placed in a compact pedal sized enclosure. This is an ideal addition to any pedal board or rack system.

RJM Music Tone Saver (Buffer)

Any time you add effects or long cables to your guitar rig, you will lose some of your guitar’s tone. The treble will start to roll off, resulting in a dull tone that is missing some of the life it had when you you were plugging straight into the amp. This can happen whether you’re using true bypass effects or using effects that have low quality buffers in them. Adding the Tone Saver will properly buffer your guitar’s signal, greatly diminishing any tone loss and bringing back the sparkle and detail you were missing. The vast majority of pro guitar rigs will include one or more buffers for this reason.

The Tone Saver runs on 9 volts like most effects pedals, but internally converts that 9 volts up to 18 volts, which results in increased audio performance and more headroom than you’ll ever need. There is also a transformer isolated output that allows you to split your guitar’s signal to a tuner or second amp without signal loss or hum due to ground loops.

Add a Tone Saver to your guitar rig and get back the tone you’ve been missing out on!

Note: the first Tone Saver was sent to Dave Friedman of Rack Systems. Dave used it for Steve Lukather’s new pedalboard. You can see the pedalboard on rig-talk.com or hugerackinc.com

To order the Tone Saver, go to RJM Music’s webstore. RJM dealers will be getting them soon.

MIDI Support for Mesa Boogie Amps

Our products are very popular with Mesa Boogie amp owners. More than half of our customers are using an Amp Gizmo, Mini Amp Gizmo, RG-16 or Rack Gizmo to add MIDI control to their Mesa amp.

However, there’s a fair amount of confusion regarding our support for these amps. We do support every amp they make (if we missed one let me know!), but there are many different amps, many different footswitch styles and sometimes our custom interface cables can work with more than one amp.

So, I’m going to try to summarize our support for their amps, breaking them up into categories:

Standard 1/4-inch jacks
Most of Mesa’s amps have simple 1/4-inch switching jacks. All of these amps can be controlled using our 1/4-inch adapter cable (AC-4QTRS-10). If you have an Amp Gizmo (not the Mini), you can connect to the amp using off-the-shelf 1/4″ cables.

Some popular amps in this category:

• Mini Rectifier
• Royal Atlantic
• Transatlantic TA-15 and TA-30

Please note that some amps have 1/4-inch jacks and a custom multi-pin jack. In these cases, we recommend using the custom cable made specifically for the amp – the custom solution generally results in quieter switching than the 1/4-inch cable.

Standard 1/4-inch jacks in multiple locations
Some of Mesa’s amps have multiple 1/4-inch jacks in different locations: on the front panel, on the rear panel or on the underside of the chassis. Some amps have jacks in all three locations. Our standard 1/4-inch adapter cable will not reach all of the jacks at the same time, so we recommend using the original Amp Gizmo – you can run individual 1/4-inch cables from the Gizmo to the amp’s different footswitch jacks, which makes it easy to reach all of the jacks.

The amps that fall into this category are:

• Mark II
• Mark III
• Lone Star and Lone Star Special

The RRN cable
This is the first of our Mesa-specific cables, which supports the following amps:

• Dual Rectifier (3 channel version and Multi-Watt version)
• Nomad Series
• Roadster
• Road King Series 1 (does not switch the Ext Trig function, which is no big loss!)
• Road King Series 2 (does not switch the Tuner Mute)
• Triple Rectifier (3 channel version and Multi-Watt version)

This cable will also safely control the Mark V, but will not control the EQ. For full control of the Mark V, we have a specific cable for the Mark V.

The RRF cable
This cable controls the following amps:

• F seres
• Recto-o-verb (series 1 and 2)
• Rocket Series
• Single Rectifier (5-pin footswitch jack version)

Express Series
We have a specific interface cable for the Express series of amps.

Mark IV
We have a specific interface cable for the Mark IV.

Mark V
We have a specific interface cable for the Mark V as well. You can use the RRN cable to control a Mark V with some limitations (see above), but you can not use a Mark V cable to control an RRN — not safely, at least!

Quad Preamp
There are two versions of the Quad Preamp, one with a 4-pin footswitch and one with a 6-pin footswitch. We have a special interface cable for each.

That pretty much sums it up – if you don’t see your amp listed here, or have other questions, please feel free to contact us!

It’s been an unbelievably long time since our last installment of the Mastermind GT Chronicles. Since then, we’ve not only been busy with the Rack Gizmo product release, but also been implementing a huge amount of changes on the Mastermind GT itself.

After all the trials and tribulations, I think we have a design that will not only accomplish everything we originally intended – and more – but, just as importantly, will be easier to manufacture.

We’re not yet prepared to disclose the full feature list yet, but here’s what we can tell you:

• 22 buttons, in a layout very similar to the prototype. Much nicer enclosure than the prototype!
• A display over every button with configurable backlight colors for each, also like the prototype. These displays will be larger than the prototype displays and will allow different fonts to be used.
• The main display is no longer a touch screen. It is larger: 4.3″ / 11cm diagonal in widescreen format, and is a grayscale display. It’s a graphic display, allowing for configurable font size and layout. The touch screen was abandoned due to concerns over breakage, cost and difficulty in manufacturing.
• All displays are transflective, meaning that they are visible in both very low and very bright light conditions.
• And, all displays will be well protected. You will not be able to put your combat boots through the display!
• USB support for direct connection to PC, Mac, iPad, etc.
• There will be editor software for PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad and probably Android.
• Standard MIDI in and out as well as MIDI over 6 pin XLR for use with our Rack Gizmo.
• A couple of accessory 9VDC outputs to power tuner, wah, etc.
• 4 expression pedal jacks, 4 external switches

There will be more fun stuff, but for now it will remain under wraps! Of course if you are on the newsletter, we’ll tell you those secrets much sooner. You can go to https://www.rjmmusic.com/mmgtsignup.html to be on our VIP list!

The firmware will be equally interesting – we’re using a pretty serious microprocessor in this one, at least 10 times faster than the original Mastermind’s processor, with 16 times the memory. This will allow us to have very broad support for MIDI and have specialized support for many devices. We want to not only support typical guitar gear, but also DJ and recording gear, especially software like Ableton Live, Logic, Protools, etc.

A new set of prototype circuit boards are in the works now. I’m hoping to have some pictures to show off in the next few weeks. It won’t be a finished unit, but it will have a whole lot of buttons and displays!

BTW, if you have any ideas for features, especially regarding use with Ableton, Protools, etc., please let us know! I’ll be writing support for that kind of stuff soon, so this would be an excellent time to put in your requests. If you have friends who use those, please have them sign up for the VIP list at https://www.rjmmusic.com/mmgtsignup.html.

Thanks for reading, and I hope the next update will not take nearly as long!

In an earlier post, we listed the goals for our Mini Rack project and had a preliminary list of gear. The rack is just starting to come together, and I’ve finally drawn up a rig diagram for it. We’re running six pedals and an effects processor using the 4 cable method. It’s pretty similar to one of our Rack Gizmo examples, with the major exception that this rig has stereo output capabilities.

To accomplish this, we take the effect loop send from our amp, convert it to stereo with a special cable, then run it through the last loop of the Rack Gizmo, which switches the second half of the effects processor. Note that we’re using insert cables: they have a stereo (aka TRS, or tip-ring-sleeve) 1/4-inch plug on one end, and individual left and right 1/4-inch plugs on the other. This allows us to connect the effects processor, which has left and right jacks, to the Rack Gizmo, which has stereo/TRS jacks.

The left and right outputs from the rack are intended to be sent to the effects return of our amp and the effects return of a second amp which will be used only as a power amp. In a pinch, we can just use one side of the stereo signal with a single amp.

More to come… Hopefully I’ll have some time to start wiring soon!

View the RJM Mini Rack Rig Diagram