If all of your pedals are true bypass and you are running a regular guitar cord long lengths (20ft or more) to your pedal board than you might be losing tone by not using a low capacitance cord. This is not true for people using regular or low output pickups (8k or less although mileage may vary based on the way the tone controls are designed) or someone using active pickups. Here are some figures based on different cord lengths and an average cord.
40ft cord 10k pickup impedance(roll off at 1.6khertz)
20ft cord 10k pickup impedance(roll off at 3.2khertz)
These are ideal frequency responses and maybe lower in real life. In some experiments I ran on some 18ft custom made low cap cables I could detect a definite loss of highs without the buffer on (guitar>cable>buffer[on/off]>cable>amp).
Moral of the story is if you are experiencing tone suck put a boss pedal(like the tuner which i know every one of you has) first in your chain. The buffer in it will prevent tone suck. If you still are experiencing lost highs you probably have a bad cable (old or a cheapo) and are probably experiencing the dreaded black rust which is prevented by the “oxygen free” cables that you can get. I’m not saying buy the most expensive cables that you can find. I’m just saying know what you have and what you can do with it.
