Creation Audio Labs Redeemer onboard guitar buffer

You can order this from Creation Audio Labs HERE

Brent's take:

As I was writing up the review for this item I realized I was writing quite a lot about onboard guitar buffers in general, as opposed to this specific onboard guitar buffer, so I'll focus only on this onboard guitar buffer in this article and would direct you to the general discussion on guitar buffers in my blog HERE.

I bought this product honestly on a whim - I thought "hey, for $50 maybe eventually I'll put it in a guitar".  I built a few guitars and didn't think much about it until I finally finished my carved-top redwood guitar, the culmination of (off and on) over a year's worth of work, and it sounded like mud.  Here was a neck-thru guitar made of mostly maple and walnut, with bright pickups, and it sounded muddy.  I was pretty down.  Then I remembered this Redeemer unity buffer and thought "what the heck - I'll try it and worst case I'll take it back out".  I think I put it in in under an hour.  

The install was very simple - I clipped the leads to my existing jack.  Soldered the leads from the system/new jack to the clipped leads from my guitar, heat shrink wrapped the connection (I think I used a lighter under the heat shrink wrap to shrink it - it worked), wrapped my battery in the included foam, and it was done.  

The tone difference was really remarkable.  I thought maybe I'd hear a difference and it would be placebo, but the difference was enough that even my wife commented on it.  First of all the mud was gone and I had a lot of my high frequencies back - that was great.  Then the bass had a tighter more "hifi" quality - good for modern cleans and harder distorted tones - less good for classic crunch tones.  I couldn't hear any hiss or distortion from the unit, and since the battery drain stops when you're unplugged, I've been using the same battery for the last 6 months and I haven't had an issue. 

Ideally I would have installed a battery compartment in the guitar if I'd known I'd go this way, but 4 screws and switching out a 9V isn't that big of a deal for when I will need to do it.  Also, I haven't tested this feature, but they claim that even if your battery dies some output will get to the amp.  I wouldn't want to have to rely on this, but nice to know you aren't going quiet.  

You can hear a pedal steel player turn it on and off HERE

Premier Guitar installed this same system in a Strat - you can read about it HERE

From the manufacturer:

"

Why do you need a guitar pick-up buffer?

Because your instrument's output is high impedance your pick-up will suffer from loss of fidelity due to the tone sucking effect of cable capacitance, FX pedal and amplifier loads, as well as the pick-up of stray noises through the connecting cords.  Even if you've used a hundred dollar oxygen-free low-capacitance cable, you've probably never heard how good your instrument can truly sound.  Also, rolling back your guitar's volume knob raises the impedance even more and you get all the more tone suck.  A good guitar buffer kit will fix all this. 

Old guitar buffer circuit designs got a bad reputation because they colored the tone, added noise and distortion; and if the battery ever died so did your signal. The Redeemer's innovative new circuitry solves all these problems!  

• Transparent, flat frequency from 10Hz to 50kHz won't color your tone.

• Crystal clear, flat phase response improves signal definition and image.

• Super high input-Z so you can rollback your volume without tone loss.

• Low output-Z can drive hundreds of feet of cable, and...

• Suppress cable noise, and...

• Be used as a guitar signal splitter, and...

• To plug directly into any mixer line input without using a tone killing DI box.

• Extremely low distortion (appx. 0.0005% THD+N).

• Extremely low noise (less than -125dBu).

• Long battery life, 300+ hours with an alkaline battery (less than 3mA draw).

• Dead battery mode allows enough signal so you can keep the show going.

• 3.6V to 24VDC for extra headroom.

• Easy Installation kit, just two wires to connect the circuit.

• Less than the cost of a high quality, low capacitance guitar cable.

• Appx. 1" x 3/4" x 5/16"

High impedance magnetic and piezo pick-ups benefit the most, but evenactive pick-ups can benefit.  Why? Because active pick-ups typically still have about a 2K ohms moderately high output impedance.  This is on purpose so they can be blended and summed together; and rolling back on the volume pot raises the impedance some more.  Adding the Redeemer install kit as your guitar's final output buffer circuit makes your instrument bullet-proof to tone loss."

Best videos/sound clips:

Anthony from Texas Blues Alley here is showing off a guitar using the Creation Audio Labs Redeemer.  He very cleverly shows the effect of various cable lengths with and without buffers.  Basically you can see with the buffer onboard the guitar you get the same tone regardless of cable length/load.  

Turns out my "sub hour" install was pretty slow - this guy Thor does it in <4 minutes="" p="">