You’ll find true-bypass switching on many boutique pedals. It means that when the effect is off, the signal from the guitar travels directly from the input to the output jack without passing through any other circuits. It’s good if you use minimal effects, short leads and love the sound of your amp.

Most ‘normal’ pedals, meanwhile, contain a buffer preamp that gives the signal a helpful shove as it passes through the deactivated effect, but without adding gain. This can help to overcome treble-sapping capacitance (see step 12) that can occur in long chains of true-bypass pedals linked together.

Tone nerds say non true-bypass pedals sound ‘bad’. Everybody else adjusts their other settings accordingly.