Is it normal ?

[daz]

As you may recall i posted that a chorus i bought was making a ticking sound from the clock no matter whether i had it on my board or by itself just 2 cables and a battery. So i returned it and god a "good" one, a ibanez mini. Very good sounding japan made and rather expensive for what it is. And like the other one, true bypass and analog. It does the same thing ! Guitar>chorus w/battery or PSU> amp. If i use a clean sound on the amp no problem. If i put it in the effects loop no problem. But any amount of OD even a small amount after the chorus and the ticking s there when the chorus is off just like the other one. So is this just normal for analog true bypass chorus? I really don't want a buffered one because i have tried a few and they do hings to the tone i don't like. Is there anything anyone can think of i could try to eliminate this? I suppose i could rig up a DPDT to bypass it entirely and leave the chorus on, but what a PITA not to mention it would be a challenge with the lack of space.

Ah ha...a clue ! This tells me little but it might be obvious whats going on to you elec geniuses. I just realized that it only does it when either of my 2 my strat's volume is lower than 9. On 10 it goes away. They both have treble bleeds which i suspect may be whats causing it but i don't understand why IF that is the case, and i sure can't live w/o the bleeds. Any ideas?

Ok, i guess it;s typical and what i found is by putting a non true bypass buffered pedal in front of it it goes away. I have 2 tube screamers that sit in a junk drawer because i prefer a cheap chinese knockoff that has true bypass. But maybe i'll see how the other ones sound as far as what they do to my tone without true bypass. If i notice noting bad i suppose i may use one of them. This crap never ends...

[Mick Bailey]

I have a ringmod that does the same thing - roll off the guitar volume and I hear the internal oscillator (in this case it's a whistle). None of my guitars have treble bleeds. I tried everything with that pedal I could think of with grounds/PSU etc and nothing worked. One day I tried it with my Tele that has switchable active electronics and in active mode the problem disappeared. My guess is the pedal needs to see a certain impedance on the input. I ended up building a little FET circuit to sit inside the pedal and this fixed the problem.

[daz]

I have a ringmod that does the same thing - roll off the guitar volume and I hear the internal oscillator (in this case it's a whistle). None of my guitars have treble bleeds. I tried everything with that pedal I could think of with grounds/PSU etc and nothing worked. One day I tried it with my Tele that has switchable active electronics and in active mode the problem disappeared. My guess is the pedal needs to see a certain impedance on the input. I ended up building a little FET circuit to sit inside the pedal and this fixed the problem.

Yep. I did all kinds of tests and some things just need a buffer, and this is one. So the moral to the story is if u r going to use any pedals with analog modulation, either get one thats buffered rather than true bypass, or get one thats true bypass if you wish but only if you will be using it with a buffered pedal before it. Since i realized the only 3 answers are don't use the chorus, live with the ticking, or put a buffer before it, i did the latter. I removed my true bypass Biyang "mad driver" (chinese tube screamer clone) and replaced it with a old ibanez TS5 tube screamer thats buffered and swapped the chorus and screamer positions on the board so the TS5 comes first and all is well. The TS5 seems not to change the tone in the least, plus the bonus is it sounds better then the Biyang for my purpose, (clean boost) so it's a win win. I initially used the mad driver because my TS5 and TS7 are not true bypass and a few other things i liked about it. But this forced me to go back to the TS5 and i rediscovered how good it sounds. Gotta be careful what u use for a buffer tho because during this adventure i tried 2 buffered chorus pedals and the bypassed sound was horrible and noisy on one and not much between on the other, both name brands. (boss and DOD) Seems buffered modulation pedals for whatever reason don't have as transparent buffers as OD pedals. My ibanez screamers from different eras which sound very different don't sound ANY different when bypassed, read:100% transparent.

[Mick Bailey]

When looking through schematics of buffered pedals some have a less than ideal input impedance. Sometimes this isn't noticeable when the effect is on, but becomes apparent when by bypassed. Occasionally it's a straightforward operation to replace a BJT input buffer with a FET and increase the associated resistors to improve things. I prefer this option to butchering or re-boxing pedals to fit true bypass switching.