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Pedalboard Whine


stewblack
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I removed a pedal which I thought was introducing some unwelcome noise. 

Imagine my distress then when I plugged in at rehearsal to have my band mates recoil in horror at the racket coming from my amp. 

Before I started playing that is. 

I only hear a half of it as the upper end of my hearing is pretty shot away, but what I could hear wasn't good. 

I had, in my naivety assumed that using battery power would eliminate such issues, but evidently there is more going on than I realised. 

I am assuming that I need to strip it down and go through it lead by lead, pedal by pedal to find the culprit. I'm posting here for you to chip in with ideas, what to look out for how best to test it. 

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To anyone else who may experience a similar problem, this is what I have learnt. 

It is a job for Miss Marple. 

You need patience, you need time. I went through the cables, both audio and power. Using a couple of proven non noisy pedals, I ensured the leads all worked silently. 

A relatively simple start. 

The devil, it transpires, is in the way the pedals react to one another. No use testing them all individually. 

Choose one you definitely want, add one, listen, repeat. 

In my case I only got to the second pedal and found it needed a separate power source from the first pedal. Even though they were being powered by isolated outputs from a rechargeable battery, still they whined. 

I then added a third pedal if it whined it went in one box if it didn't it went into another. I continued thus until all were sorted. 

Some only made a little noise, but once added together the noise became greater than the sum of its parts. 

Using only the silent pedals I kept adding until I found that particular configuration created a noise. 

It was a question of taking them out and putting them in a different position. I failed to find any obvious logic. 

Once I had an order that worked I put them onto the board and the noise, absent when the pedals were just lined up, returned. 

The whole thing was baffling, remember there wasn't a mains adaptor involved anywhere. 

I removed the Boss LS2 and bingo! A useable level of unwanted noise, but now my little loop was no more. 

It transpired the reward for my endeavour was a serendipitous one. I put the Boss back on with the whole board in one of the loops. So, I have a completely clean signal which sounds like a bass guitar, running alongside an effect altered signal which sounds however I want it to. And I can mix the two to suit. 

What have I learned? Different branded pedals don't always like each other. Eliminating mains power is no guarantee of eliminating noise. Don't expect any of it to make any sense. 

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5 minutes ago, stewblack said:

Using only the silent pedals I kept adding until I found that particular configuration created a noise. 

It was a question of taking them out and putting them in a different position. I failed to find any obvious logic. 

Once I had an order that worked I put them onto the board and the noise, absent when the pedals were just lined up, returned. 

 

Dey do dat dough, don't dey?

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Indeed. 

Just to confound me further this has been happening. I have spent the evening adding pedals to an ever growing chain including loops and switches and whatever I can come up with.

All different pedals all randomly arranged, just as they came out of the box. All daisy chained off one wall wart power supply, all connected with odds and ends of cables largely made by me by chopping up cheap carp cables like the ones that come free from Thomann with cheap basses.

And you know what? This crazy ever growing line of pedals is utterly silent. 

So in conclusion, any pedal board is only as good as it is useless. The more you spend, but more importantly the more you need it to work the more remotely unlikely are the chances that it will. 

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On 23/12/2020 at 16:38, stewblack said:

In my case I only got to the second pedal and found it needed a separate power source from the first pedal. Even though they were being powered by isolated outputs from a rechargeable battery, still they whined

That's odd. Daisy chaining often causes whine, but it definitely shouldn't happen if your power outputs are isolated from each other. What battery/isolation adapters are you using? 

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1 hour ago, AJ567 said:

That's odd. Daisy chaining often causes whine, but it definitely shouldn't happen if your power outputs are isolated from each other. What battery/isolation adapters are you using? 

I have a few different ones, mooer, Rockboard, Harley benton. The Rockboard states that it delivers 1 amp from each output suggesting that they're separated. Anyhow I have managed to sort it out by giving that one problem pedal its own power supply and removing one of the digital pedals altogether. 

Next stop is a decent noise suppressor, just as a belt and braces measure. 

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6 hours ago, stewblack said:

I have a few different ones, mooer, Rockboard, Harley benton. The Rockboard states that it delivers 1 amp from each output suggesting that they're separated. Anyhow I have managed to sort it out by giving that one problem pedal its own power supply and removing one of the digital pedals altogether. 

Next stop is a decent noise suppressor, just as a belt and braces measure. 

Well done. It’s always fun trying to find the noise. A high quality isolated power supply may really help too - Cioks or Pedal train for e.g though it sounds like you’re on top of it now anyway! 

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On 22/12/2020 at 11:12, stewblack said:

I am assuming that I need to strip it down and go through it lead by lead, pedal by pedal to find the culprit. I'm posting here for you to chip in with ideas, what to look out for how best to test it. 

Sometimes it's the only way!

I was finding that I was getting an unpleasant crackle from my little PB, but which wasn't always there. I wondered whether it might be my WL 20s with an active bass (which has had some comment on that score from others), particularly when they were running out of juice - but the issue was still there with a full charge and they were completely fine when connected directly to the amp.

After checking each connection in turn it turned out to be my VT Bass DI feeding into my Proton filter either directly, or indirectly via another pedal, even when both were in by-pass mode. Didn't happen the other way around i.e. Proton --> VT Bass DI was fine! Weird, huh? Anyway, I've just swapped the running order of the pedals and all now seems to be well in the Krow bass-ment, much to my relief!

Edited by Al Krow
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I know what you mean @Al Krow my whiny  board was absolutely fine when I used it for an Internet gig a while back.

I realised just now that I used to run it off two battery packs and I only had one connected when it was so noisy. 

I have a horrible feeling that was all that was wrong. But I couldn't for the life of me tell you how the power was routed when it worked! 

In other words, I fiddled when there was no need. 🤦🏼‍♂️ 

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