Power Supplies

L

LeJert

New member
Hello,

Im getting some noise in my signal, especially in when the pedal chain is all turned off. Its a steady hum.

- seems less with 5 pedals on a daisy chain (go figure)
- my pedals are pretty quiet when i use them one at a time. Some dead quiet.
- i tried a cheap amazon supply but also just tried a voodoo labs power plus 3. Voodoo is incrementally better but still got some hum/ noise. Had higher hopes
- HSS strat. Pick up selection doesnt make much of a difference.
- i have a couple pedals with charge pumps but i pulled them out - same
- thought the cephied chorus was the culprit but when i remove it, it still does it.
- phase 2 picks it up
- i tried two different amps - same
- chain is like 5 to 10 pedals
- my supply is plugged into a powerbar

Tried to provide as much context as i could think of.

The noise i speak of is not the worst but the amp hums, especially as i raise the volume and also treble

I guess my questions are:

- is a bit of noise inevitable in a chain more than a couple pedals?
- Should i try a 1spot?
- should i just get over it?
- are there other solutions here?
- should i be avoiding certain things to reduce noise?

Thank you
 
It sounds like you've covered all the basic stuff already. Sometimes there are pedals that behave well on their own, but don't get along with others. You'll probably have to build your chain up pedal by pedal to see when the noise starts. The tricky thing is, the pedal you added when the noise starts may not be the noisy one; it could be something earlier in the chain and the last pedal is sensitive to it. So once the noise starts, take each previous pedal out one at a time to see if the noise stops. If it does, you've found your culprit.

The other possibility is that it's a cumulative thing and not just one pedal. I wasn't having noise issues on a daisy chain but did notice my signal got cleaner when I moved to an isolated power supply. Same thing when I added a buffer to the front of my chain. There wasn't a problem necessarily, but fidelity improved. Those things may or may not be helpful in your case.

Good luck and Godspeed!
 
Do you have a pedal with buffered bypass? Put it in the front of the chain with everything off and see if it makes a difference.
 
Your context doesn't include what pedals are in the chain and their combined current draw. If you have multiple high-current pedals in the chain and the supply doesn't have enough to cover them, you'll be getting noise. If I had a dollar for every "my 250mA supply is usually so quiet but I'm getting a lot of noise in this 400mA pedal" email I received, I could buy everyone lunch.
 
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