Open mouth, insert foot... stay far away from the Hum Debugger

[That90'sGuy]

First off, I want to apologize for making statements on the Hum Debugger without putting it through its right paces. I always try to post good information on products that I have experience with, but this time I dropped the ball. The pedal sounded good at apartment volumes, but the poor qualities of it really showed at gig volume (which is what I recorded my new clip at).

In short, my pedal doesn't have quite the same issues as the pedal Gary got, but I did notice the "digitizing" of the signal at louder volumes and while there wasn't much crackling at lower volumes, higher volumes unfortunately bring it out. This pedal is not silent, it is not transparent and I can't recommend it now. Everything Tunnelvision warned folks of is true, this pedal has issues and needs to be recalled. I will be sending mine back a.s.a.p.

It looks like I sung the praises of this pedal all too soon, when I should have kept my mouth shut until it was used in a cranked environment :smack:

That leaves the ISP Decimator as the best one on the market as we speak (something I'm not thrilled about). Looks like I'll be patiently waiting for Suhrs silent system for P90s (my rig is dead silent with humbuckers, so go figure). If Electro Harmonix irons out some issues, I'll probably have another go at it, but this one can't stay the way it is.

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/pagemusic.cfm?bandID=220363

I'll let the clip do the talking. Yes, you can hear it cut down a lot of noise, but the side effects just make it not worth it.

Here is a true reflection of the pedal, hope you guys find it informative.

 

[ratherdashing]

Re: Open mouth, insert foot... stay far away from the Hum Debugger

Interesting. Did you read my comment in the old thread? I was curious about some of the noises I was hearing when the pedal was engaged.

 

[That90'sGuy]

Re: Open mouth, insert foot... stay far away from the Hum Debugger

Interesting. Did you read my comment in the old thread? I was curious about some of the noises I was hearing when the pedal was engaged.

The noises were present, but were barely audible at low volumes... well, when the signal gets amplified, so did the strange noises.

 

[kmcguitars]

Re: Open mouth, insert foot... stay far away from the Hum Debugger

Yup! I found out the hard way to never right a review on gear until it's been put through it's paces. From the bedroom to the stage is a totally different environment. Have you ever tried the Boss NF-1? It's old hat, But simple. I use it for recording (Live I don't care about Hum,Just quick with the vol. knob) It's a Lil' tricky to set to your playing dynamics, but I've never noticed it to suck tone. Once it's engaged it's dead silent. Basically a touch sensitive on/off switch. Maybe something like this would suit your needs?

 

[davedvdy]

Re: Open mouth, insert foot... stay far away from the Hum Debugger

Well Chris, is it that Metallic-type of negative sound that I am hearing? Is that what you mean? I am trying to figure out if that is what the problem is. I was listening to it on my crappy Laptop speakers, I probably should listen to your clip w/good headphones.

 

[That90'sGuy]

Re: Open mouth, insert foot... stay far away from the Hum Debugger

Well Chris, is it that Metallic-type of negative sound that I am hearing? Is that what you mean? I am trying to figure out if that is what the problem is. I was listening to it on my crappy Laptop speakers, I probably should listen to your clip w/good headphones.

Yep... that would be it, good ears I never would have guessed it did that to the signal at lower volumes and certainly, from the original clip I had posted, it sounded like it wasn't coloring the tone. That's just the start of the issues with it though, there is also a noticeable crackling sound introduced from the pedal that is constant at higher volumes (it wasn't really any issue at low volumes).

 

[That90'sGuy]

Re: Open mouth, insert foot... stay far away from the Hum Debugger

Yup! I found out the hard way to never right a review on gear until it's been put through it's paces. From the bedroom to the stage is a totally different environment. Have you ever tried the Boss NF-1? It's old hat, But simple. I use it for recording (Live I don't care about Hum,Just quick with the vol. knob) It's a Lil' tricky to set to your playing dynamics, but I've never noticed it to suck tone. Once it's engaged it's dead silent. Basically a touch sensitive on/off switch. Maybe something like this would suit your needs?

Hey kmc, I'll be honest, I haven't tried the NF-1. I'm a little leery of Boss effects because I had an NS-2 that did change the playing dynamics on me and effected the tone subtlely (I think for low volume playing, once again, it wouldn't be noticeable, but in a live setting it'd probably do the same thing). I'm extremely picky when it comes to these things, the only pedal that has been truly transparent has been the ISP Decimator, but that doesn't cut out enough noise for me and isn't active while I'm playing. I'll look into the pedal though, sounds like something that'd be interesting to try (and who knows, maybe Boss had noise figured out better with the older circuits). Thanks for the recommendation

 

[davedvdy]

Re: Open mouth, insert foot... stay far away from the Hum Debugger

Thank you, though. Even though you might've had your initial thread post incorrect, this thread saved me the headache of purchase and return, and hopefully quite a few other people. GaryMct must've deleted his sound files, I clicked that link, it looks like it was removed.

As for the Boss noise suppressors, I totally agree...not impressed at all. I have one on my GT-6, and it's probably the least useful feature on there, besides that friggin Ring Modulator thing, lmao.

Right now, the Suhr Backplate System (BPSSC) is owning (actually the Factory SSC owns). Hopefully John will get a P-90 product put together. Yeah, it's expensive, but it is very worth it, even though it still leaves some high frequency hiss. No noiseless pickup compares to it, IMO.

 

[wildstar]

Re: Open mouth, insert foot... stay far away from the Hum Debugger

Thanks for the heads-up!

Cheers

 

[bloodswords]

Re: Open mouth, insert foot... stay far away from the Hum Debugger

has anyone tried the Humdebugger through the FX loop instead?