New Madbean Current Lover and Klon Buffers - Incompatible? Squealing Issue

Fingolfen

Fingolfen

Well-known member
So I just built a few of the new Madbean Current Lover pedals - and a friend sent me a video with a lot of oscillation, etc. that I hadn't heard when I'd tested the pedal. I think I've narrowed down the problem, but I'm not sure it makes sense.

(Pardon the REALLY rough videos, dust, and wife bringing the cat in)

The pedal sounds clean when I test it at the front of the signal chain:


It sounds pretty clean when I test it near the end with no Klon (with Klon buffered bypass) in the signal chain:


When there is a Klon in the chain in front of it though:


I can also get it to make noise when I activate a compressor in front of it... though not as much.

So... thoughts? Is this something intrinsic to the EM design or something else???
 
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Fingolfen said:
Any handy tips on making the two play nice? Two sides of an effect loop or something?
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don't run them together. Sometimes the answer is not what people wanna hear. Strymon stuff can be good for messing with clocks in flangers and delays. Buffers and charge pumps like the klon style are notorious for bringing the noise in these vintage circuits.
 
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I was only powering the EM through the t-rex, everything else was powered by my cleverly hidden 1Spot...

What about a Klon where you can go true bypass like the AionFX one?
 
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Big Monk said:
It’s the charge pump causing the issue. It’s a known thing.
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Gotcha, so even going with a true bypass wouldn't help? I'm just trying to figure out how the charge pump on a deactivated Klon in true bypass would be talking to the EM - especially if the EM is on a completely different isolated power supply.
 
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Big Monk said:
This is also a scenario that makes me seriously reconsider whether these power supplies are actually isolated.

In theory, this should NOT happen if the power feed AND ground is isolated.
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I'd tend to agree... of course, it depends how far back in the chain you have to go to get "isolation"

I was running everything but the Electric Mistress on the 1SPOT, and the EM on the T-rex, but both are going into the same surge suppressor ...
 
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Just some more info - The guy that first found the issue and gave me the heads up was running a Strymon Zuma power supply, and I think his Klon was an Archer...
 
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Guardians of the analog said:
I didn't think it was possible to hate him more, yet here we are🤢
Clearly you have to have the klone in your setup, which means potential issues with other flangers/delays down the road. Luckily this exists...no charge pump and true bypass.
moana-youre-welcome.gif


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Thanks! I'll check it out... EL stuff is usually fairly awesome...

That being said... the JM side gets better though... :ROFLMAO:

John Mayer signs fan’s Klon Centaur onstage and marks his specific settings

One lucky gig-goer received some special tone advice from the Sob Rock star himself, who divulged his go-to Klon settings
www.guitarworld.com

John Mayer signs fan’s Klon Centaur onstage and marks his specific settings​

By Matt Owen published May 11, 2022
One lucky gig-goer received some special tone advice from the Sob Rock star himself, who divulged his go-to Klon settings

mAe5R5iK2oMLMsK5GcK3YT-320-80.jpg
 
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Chiming in late and behind others more steeped in EM usage/lore than I, but I ran some tests with with my Old Chap and Kliche and sure enough I get a faint whistle/whine in time to the rate. I first noticed it with other clock bearing devices upstream. At the suggestion of @blackhatboojum I built a simple Jfet buffer, but that didn’t stop it. Tried it with a boss pedal between the kliche and Old Chap and it’s still there. Meh, damn thing is too freaking good sounding to chalk it up as a loss though.
 
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Yeah, the kliche was daisy chained with a boss ts-9, mojito, Tommy, and a parentheses mini on the same line. I can try isolating the kliche on a dedicated wall wart as well for the sake of science. One other thing is that the OneSpot and the Dunlop wall wart are plugged into the same power strip. If I want to get really anal I can try plugging both the wall warts into the wall, or even into the wall in different outlets (but that’s just nonsense since the outlets are probably in series anyways🤣).
 
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So all of this is starting to make me think that the solution we came up with in this thread to help me combine an 18V Current Lover and a 9V XC Phase in a 2-in-1 one build using one of PedalPCB’s charge pump 3PDT boards is probably in actuality a phenomenally bad idea, correct? In that case the advice was to put the charge pump board on the 9 V phaser and run the fixed 18 V power over to the Flanger.

Just other anecdotal comments – I had almost the exact same whine in a two in one build of a Cetus and Little Green Scream Machine - replacing the charge pump chip eliminated the whine, but I still sometimes get loud noise when I switch one or both of the pedals on but it goes away if I switch them back off and turn them on again. There was also a recent thread about that same whine that was very specific to having a Kliche in a certain order in the signal chain.

Mike.
 
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Big Monk said:
The only thing worse than using a charge pump near a flanger is using one inside a flanger.
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So it sounds like, unless I want to run the Current Lover off the same 9 V supply as the phaser at 9 V rather than 18vV (not my preference) I’ll go back to my original klugey solution of having a separate 18 V power jack for the Current Lover board (which is fine, I have an extra unused 18 V output on my 1spot isolated power supply) and have the only shared connection between the two boards be the output from one board to the input on the other. (Unfortunately, I’ve already committed to doing this as a two in one build as the custom drilled and printed enclosure is already in process at Tayda.)

I’m pretty sure that the only pedal elsewhere on my board that has a charge pump is the Cetus but, because I’m using isolated power supplies and a loop switcher, it doesn’t seem to be adversely affecting other time based effects on the board like my chorus or unison double tracker, so hopefully it won’t be an insurmountable issue here either. I’m also adding the General Tso at the front of the chain, which I believe uses buffered bypass, so I’ll have to see what issues, if any, that causes or just keep it off (the loop switcher will take it completely out of the signal path) when I’m using the flanger.

Thanks,
Mike
 
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Diynot said:
The old chap is an 18v so it is on a dedicated Dunlop wall wart the rest is all one spot
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TC1044SCPA or 7660SCPAZ in the Kliche, I betting TC1044SCPA!
I have had more folks with issues on here with TC1044SPCA & suggested 7660SCPAZ & Boom, Noise gone!
True tone are probably the Best power supply out there!???
Guardian is right, It is a known issue so it may not work!
Strymon is well known with noise issues in their pedals when running from other branded pedals & power supplies.
Trial & Error is Real!
 
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