They do now! The V3 Series pedals include true bypass as an option that you can use with or without our Pure Tone buffer. However, we’ve done true bypass our way, which is reliable and quiet. We designed our own “Forever Footswitch” which has a Lifetime Warranty along with the rest of the pedal… it will never wear out. The footswitch is connected to relays with gold-plated contacts. The switching system also contains a proprietary circuit for silencing switch pop. No other pedal company spends nearly as much on switching as Truetone.
In case you’re wondering, here’s why we didn’t use “true bypass” for so many years:
The switches required for “true-bypass” are much less reliable in the long run, typically rated at around 5000 stomps, but often lasting less than that because the rating is based on 240V, not 1/10th of a volt as comes out of guitar pickups. They also cause audible switch pop through your amp. The V2 and V3 Series pedals have a proprietary switching system rated at 10,000,000 stomps and are virtually silent. The V2 and V3 switches actually cost us a lot more than 3PDT “true-bypass” switches, but they’re well worth it.
Secondly, the buffering system in Truetone pedals was taken from our Pure Tone pedal. This pedal was built originally for guitarist Neil Zaza back in the 1996, because he 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.