Visual Sound Pure Tone

The Visual Sound Pure Tone is a buffer pedal from Visual Sound, announced in January 2012. It takes the buffer circuit that Visual Sound already builds into all of its pedals and puts it in a small, standalone package, so players can get the same signal protection on any board, not just inside a Visual Sound multi-effect or overdrive.¹

A buffer's job is simple: long guitar cables and chains of effects load down a guitar's signal and roll off the high end, a problem players call tone sucking. Visual Sound's stated use for the Pure Tone is to eliminate cable capacitance and tone sucking when it is placed first in the chain of effects, ahead of everything else on the board.¹

Where it came from

Visual Sound introduced the Pure Tone as a buffer pedal drawn from its own pedals, describing it as "the buffer that is in all Visual Sound pedals... now available in a new, tiny, Custom Shop package," which is the clearest statement of what it is: the house circuit, repackaged on its own.¹

Using it on a board

Visual Sound's own instructions for the pedal are short: put it first in the chain of effects, plug in your input and output cables, and power it from a 9V supply, with the company's 1 SPOT adapter given as an example.¹ That first-in-chain placement matters, because a buffer can only protect the signal that comes after it; the run from guitar to board is the run most worth protecting.

For how the Pure Tone compares with other standalone buffers on the market, see the Buffer Pedals type page, which covers the category as a whole, including pedals such as the Truetone Pure Tone and the JHS Pedals Little Black Buffer.

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