Does Cable Length matter?
In a word..... YES... In our discussions about Scatter winding found
here, we learned that anytime you have long runs of electrical conductors laying next to each other, there is a potential for capacitive loss. As we know, capacitors in their basic form are filters. The more capacitance something has, the more high frequencies it filters or cuts from the signal.
Guitar cables, especially of poor quality are very susceptible to this. Cables longer than about 15 feet start showing signs of signal loss to a trained ear. When we add a pedal board, we usually almost double the length of our cable from the guitar to the amp. When figuring the total cable length, don't forget the jumper leads between each pedal. This could add an additional 6-10 feet depending on your setup. With a board full of true-bypass pedals, we could have 40-50 feet of cable before we realize it.
True Bypass Pedals and cable Length...
when a tru-bypass pedal is switched off, it just becomes part of the cable length as the signal "bypasses" the pedal. This means that if you have 6-8 true bypass pedals all switched off, then you have one long cable from the guitar, through the board, to the amp.
Buffered Input
The word buffer just means in simple terms that there is a signal "Push" happening, usually by means of a small preamp of some sort.
When this small preamp is on, the effective cable length becomes much less of a factor. Some players may not need this, but most of us would benefit from a bit of a push into our pedal board, effectively cutting our cable length substantially. The bonus footage in the video shows some effective ways to do this and what to look for.
http://youtu.be/WCl4g3_lAiA
