More about pedal placement. (front vs loop)

[zcostilla]

I did not realize the Tonemasters lacked an fx loop.

The only thing keeping it from being near perfect

[fep]

I have a hard time with pedals in front of the amp because of the tone suck that invariably occurs, even in pedals with "true bypass" and buffers. There is capacitance added to the high impedance signal path by every single pedal circuit and their connecting wires, no matter how it is designed. True bypass pedals still suck tone when off. Tone suck is less pronounced with a loop. I can manage one pedal, such as a reverb pedal, before the amp but more than that and the tone degrades. And most pedals other than reverb are boring after a couple of bars. Nothing sounds better to me than a low capacitance cable (e.g., George L's 16 pf/foot) straight into an amp with a good spring reverb. YMMV.

Isn't that why you put a buffer at the beginning of the chain, to get rid of pedal suck?

[KirkP]

Isn't that why you put a buffer at the beginning of the chain, to get rid of pedal suck?

There’s no need for a dedicated buffer pedal such as the BonaFide though. Any good quality buffered pedal will do the job. Put any Boss pedal first in your pedal chain and you have your buffer. Since it’s not true bypass, the buffer is in the chain even with the effect switched off. You can confirm a pedal is buffered by removing the battery. If no signal gets through in the off position, it’s buffered.

[sgosnell]

To me, buying a separate buffer is a waste of money. Any pedal, even true bypass, act as buffers if they're on. Put any pedal that is always on first in the chain, and you have your buffer. Or any Boss pedal will do the buffering, on or off. It's possible to have too many buffers.