My pedal board is humming

Sleeping Martyr

Sleeping Martyr

New member
So I bought a link cable so that I can use my tuner or noisegate to power my other pedals (the cost of batteries is getting high) but theres a hum when they are all chained together. Its not the wiring in the room as I've tried it in different rooms, could it be the adapter?? Am I doing something wrong?? Its just a multiple end cable with half the ends or so plugged in, thoughts??
 
Re: My pedal board is humming

Check the polarity of all your pedals. Most are center connector negative. If you have one in the chain that is center connector positive this could do it. Are they all 9 volt?
 
Re: My pedal board is humming

Sleeping Martyr said:
So I bought a link cable so that I can use my tuner or noisegate to power my other pedals (the cost of batteries is getting high) but theres a hum when they are all chained together. Its not the wiring in the room as I've tried it in different rooms, could it be the adapter?? Am I doing something wrong?? Its just a multiple end cable with half the ends or so plugged in, thoughts??
Click to expand...

Can we have a detailed explanation of your setup?
What pedals are you using?
Are you using splitters/AB's?
What cables are you using?
What power supplies and where are they plugged in?
 
Re: My pedal board is humming

GuitarDoc said:
Check the polarity of all your pedals. Most are center connector negative. If you have one in the chain that is center connector positive this could do it.
Click to expand...

Actually mixing center positive & center negative would blow up pedals, power supply or both.

Chances are good that its a simple sign that not all your pedals are happy with a shared ground. I've got a planet waves tuner with a daisy chain out but if I use the chain it generates hum. Sort of useless actually...

It may also be that the master adapter is too small & your overdrawing the milliamps it can supply... but chances are good its just that all the pedals would be happy running off a supply with isolated grounds like the Voodoo Lab, or using individual adapters.
 
Re: My pedal board is humming

I had the same problem using one of the onespot power supplies. I found that the hum was coming from two of the pedals. Now I power those two by battries and use the onespot for the other pedals.
 
Re: My pedal board is humming

Thansk guys, I'll try taking out out pedal(s) to see if that helps

The set up is

Guitar

Boss Tuner
Dunlop Cry Baby
Boss DD-3 delay
Boss Noise Gate

Amp


Pretty easy with just some patch cords in between, could it be coming for mixing the Boss pedals with the Dunlop pedal??
 
Re: My pedal board is humming

Sleeping Martyr said:
Thansk guys, I'll try taking out out pedal(s) to see if that helps

The set up is

Guitar

Boss Tuner
Dunlop Cry Baby
Boss DD-3 delay
Boss Noise Gate

Amp


Pretty easy with just some patch cords in between, could it be coming for mixing the Boss pedals with the Dunlop pedal??
Click to expand...

Go for the Wah Pedal first. If you are using the noise gate as a power supply distribution for a daisy chain cable, make sure you are using a Boss PSA adapter. I have seen my Boss TU-2 tuner go microphonic from using non Boss Power supplies.
 
Re: My pedal board is humming

I would look for a T-rex fuel tank jnr on ebay. I have never had desirable results using daisy chains or pedals to power other pedals.
 
Re: My pedal board is humming

J Moose said:
Digital pedals usually don't like being daisy chained...

Voodoo Labs new power supply is out... the ISO 5...

Just over $100.

http://www.musictoyz.com/guitar/pedals/voodoo.php

Why use anything else?
Click to expand...

http://accessories.musiciansfriend.com/product/BBE-Supa-Charger-Guitar-Pedal-Power-Supply?sku=151032

I use this one to power 5 pedals, a wah, and a midi pedal. before I got this I had to use separate power suuply for the midi pedal and the wah pedal would be very microphonic which extremely annoying for a device that gets stepped on and licked around. The BBE vs the the VD Labs has International Power support, and 8 outputs vs 5.
 
Re: My pedal board is humming

Your pedalboard is humming!?!?!

...hate to tell you this but you better throw it away before it explodes...
 
Re: My pedal board is humming

ratherdashing said:
If it had a 9V AC out for my m13, I'd buy it right now.
.
Click to expand...

There's a pedal power "Versa" in the works that'll cover everything & the kitchen sink. Downside is that, at least the one I saw a few months ago was freakin' HUGE!!! The little ISO 5 changed from the last version I saw so who knows...

Takes a lot of work to get both AC and DC outputs from the same transformer. Not to mention the sort of current that the M13 needs to run vs. a few hundred ma for a handful of pedals.

Anyway... the BBE is a copy of an earlier Voodoo power supply and, at least according to the techs I talked with, filled with really cheap parts.

I had a Brick until the summer when one pedal went south & took the Brick and everything connected along for the ride. Major meltdown... several hundred dollars worth. Thankfully everything was repairable except the Brick & one pedal which was replaced by the manufacturer.

But that whole experience, asking a lot of questions & whatnot... the techs all said that if I had been using a power supply with isolated grounds that big melt could've been avoided.

I ended up replacing the Brick with a Pedal Power II+ because its cheap insurance. In the event something "bad" happens inside a pedal again it won't blow everything up, only the one stompbox will fail. As a side benefit, my rig with the PPII+ is noticeably quieter!

Why would anyone spend hundreds, even thousands on pedals and then use the cheapest power supply possible? Doesn't make sense.
 
Re: My pedal board is humming

J Moose said:
Takes a lot of work to get both AC and DC outputs from the same transformer. Not to mention the sort of current that the M13 needs to run vs. a few hundred ma for a handful of pedals.
Click to expand...

Eh ... not quite. Transformers have nothing to do with the AC-to-DC side of things. That's the rectifier's job.

In a typical 9V DC power supply, here is the sequence of steps:

1. Transformer drops the voltage from 117V to 12V. Power is still AC at this stage.

2. Rectifier converts the 12V AC to 12V DC. The result is really choppy DC power.

3. Smoothing capacitor evens out the DC power. The result is still a bit fuzzy, but much better than it was post-rectifier.

4. The regulator, a semiconductor, turns the fuzzy 12V DC into perfectly flat 9V DC.

* NOTE: the above steps apply only to transformer-based designs, not switching power supplies like the One Spot.

So, if you wanted 9V AC out of this setup, you'd add another tap on the transformer that spits out 9V instead of 12V and just wire that up to a jack. Either that, or put a second transformer in there just to handle the AC.
 
Re: My pedal board is humming

ratherdashing said:
Eh ... not quite. Transformers have nothing to do with the AC-to-DC side of things. That's the rectifier's job.

In a typical 9V DC power supply, here is the sequence of steps:
Click to expand...

Not to get deeply into it... but the PP Versa, at least on paper is meant to be an "end-all" power supply that can power anything & everything on a board.

AC, DC, positive center & negative center in any combination covering anything from the 6 volt "sag" through 24 volt, high draw EH pedals and stuff like the Eventides & Whammy all from one supply.

Only thing is that, like I said... the last one I saw was enormous... the size of a small head. Or if your like me, its about half an entire pedalboard!

Its pretty complex for a power supply...

dr48wy.jpg


Maybe we'll get some news at NAMM... last I heard it was close to ready and the ISO is already out...

I went with the PP2+ because I needed something yesterday! Otherwise I probably would've waited for the ISO 5 since it'll power the Eventides and has an 18 volt out w/o using a parallel cable.
 
Re: My pedal board is humming

^ Holy ... that takes up way more board real estate than I'd be willing to sacrifice.

The PP2 is more power supply than almost anyone needs. I am kind of surprised they'd make something more complex than even that.
 
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