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Pure Tone Buffer
The Visual Sound gang saw a blast from the past on Ebay recently, a Pure Tone buffer. The Pure Tone was a line driver/high to low impedence converter that utilized a unity gain pre-amp buffer circuit that was introduced in 1997. It was one of Visual Sound's earliest products and here is a bit from Bob about why he came out with it in the first place.
This Pure Tone was built originally for guitarist Neil Zaza who needed something to clean up his bypass tone for all the pedals he used (VOX wah included). Pure Tone, when placed first in the chain, made it sound like you were plugged straight into the amp even when going through notorious tone killer pedals. We ended up selling about 200 of these to very happy tone conscious guitar players before we put it into Jekyll & Hyde as an added feature. So, if J&H or Rt. 66 is first in your chain, it will buffer everything that follows it as well as itself. Even if it's in the middle of the chain, it will still work to some extent.
Thirdly, the Pure Tone buffer also keeps the Hyde circuit (in Jekyll & Hyde) stable. In the early stages of design, I noticed that the Hyde circuit was prone to occillation and feedback until I put the Pure Tone circuit before it. Somehow, it left all the good characteristics in tact and eliminated the ugliness. We stopped production because we didn't feel the need to package it separately anymore.
As times and tastes have changed though, look for a reissue of the Pure Tone from Visual Sound's new Custom Shop USA division.
Check out the pictures below of the vintage Pure Tone.
