Stompboxes and a Marshall half stack....

[hareek]

Hey guys, I've come to seek your expertise again. I have a marshall tsl 100 half stack. When I plug straight into the amp, everything sounds great. When I use my stompbox rig, I get a bad hissing sound, kind of like when you crank the OD channel on an amp, but cut your guitar volume down to 0 and you get that hiss just from the amp.

Right now my rig consists of a Boss DD-6 Delay, Boss PS-2 Super Phaser, Boss PH-? Super Shifter, Dunlop Original Crybaby, and a Boss MT-2 Metal Zone. Whether a pedal is on or off, I still get the hiss. I've tried using 9V batteris in the pedals (as opposed to AC power from my powered pedal board) but that didn't change anything. When I run the effects through my FX Loop on the amp, the hissing sound is even worse.

Recently, I havn't been using my pedals in the band I'm playing in now. I've just been running my guitar to a Boss TU-whatever chromatic tuner and then from there to the amp. With that setup, the sound is perfectly fine and normal.

I havn't sat down and tried to take a closer look to see if its a bad wire somewhere or if its a particular pedal. This actually was a while back when I first noticed this problem, way before I was a member of this forum. But I started using my pedals the other day and I started thinking about the problem again, and I figured you guys might know what's going on. So any thoughts at all?

Also, the problem is only when I use the pedals with my marshall tsl 100. I have an old Fender Champ (tube), a Fender Deluxe 112 plus (solid state), Fender Blues Junior (tube), and an old Marshall that I don't know the model (its my dad's from the 70's and its a 2x12 tube amp, one clean channel), and the pedals work fine on these amps.

Sorry for such a long post!!! Thanks in advance guys.

 

[WhoFan]

Re: Stompboxes and a Marshall half stack....

i've heard many custom pedal makers say the Noise you are hearing is from the Cheap internal parts in some of the FX's you use....

Example a Boss pedal DS1 hisses like mad thru a loud amp.... but a Diamond Firburst made of much better parts is almost noise free...

Also the extra cables and connections in the pedalboard add noise too.... but it is mostly the cheaper components in the pedals themself

Odd that you only hear it thru the Marshall... but it could just be more sensitive to the pedals then the other amps.... plus it is high gain while the others are not

 

[hareek]

Re: Stompboxes and a Marshall half stack....

i've heard many custom pedal makers say the Noise you are hearing is from the Cheap internal parts in some of the FX's you use....

Example a Boss pedal DS1 hisses like mad thru a loud amp.... but a Diamond Firburst made of much better parts is almost noise free...

Also the extra cables and connections in the pedalboard add noise too.... but it is mostly the cheaper components in the pedals themself

Odd that you only hear it thru the Marshall... but it could just be more sensitive to the pedals then the other amps.... plus it is high gain while the others are not

I figured Boss would be pretty nice components. But I guess it depends on the pedal. I mean for being small stompbox, some pedals like the Super Shifter do a lot of things for such a small unit.

But I was thinking the same thing about the amp being more powerful than the others. That's probably why I only hear it on my marshall rather than the fender amps. When I have more time to sit down and play with it, I'll try one pedal at a time to see if I can narrow it down to a specific pedal, or a wire.

 

[WhoFan]

Re: Stompboxes and a Marshall half stack....

Ya good plan.. i'd change cables and pull pedals one at a time out of the loop until you can figure out which one is noisey....

Boss are good pedals... i mean there is a lot worse.. i use a lot of the Boss line... But that being said there is a lot of better quality stuff made with a better noise ratio these days.... Quality guts in them. I think a lot of people started modding Boss pedals because of the cheaper parts in them cause noise... The Pros that use Boss seem to all have their stuff modded.
But as i said the stock Boss are a good product and i use them a lot...

 

[Kamanda~SD]

Re: Stompboxes and a Marshall half stack....

Check you cables and pedal 1 by one, you said no noise from your tuner? then it can''t be that etc. You could also just look to get a noise gate.

Also, get rid of the metalzone.

 

[DankStar]

Re: Stompboxes and a Marshall half stack....

eliminate the crybaby first to see what happens. that's probably the weakest link, and I'm thinking those are not true bypass either.

 

[Skarekrough]

Re: Stompboxes and a Marshall half stack....

I would say add pedals one by one.

A single pedal may be the culprit here. But then again, it may very well be a cumalative result of having all of them there even if they're not turned on. Since none of them are true bypass it could be either.

 

[hareek]

Re: Stompboxes and a Marshall half stack....

Also, get rid of the metalzone.

The metalzone isn't in the lineup when I'm running them through my tsl 100. I was only using that on the smaller amps because I couldn't get get overdrive out of them. Even with the metalzone out of the lineup, the hissing was still there.

I would say add pedals one by one.

A single pedal may be the culprit here. But then again, it may very well be a cumalative result of having all of them there even if they're not turned on. Since none of them are true bypass it could be either.

I was thinking that too, that it could be the result of all of the pedals being there together. When I did work through the problem (probably a year and a half to 2 years ago), I did go one by one and I think I remember the crybaby by itself wasn't a problem and the DD-6 digital delay was ok by itself. For some reason, the phaser sticks out in my mind as the culprit. I'll try to work on it these next couple of days and I'll post an update here.

 

[ponch]

Re: Stompboxes and a Marshall half stack....

Why don't you add them opne by one?

 

[Kommerzbassist]

Re: Stompboxes and a Marshall half stack....

What the others said basically...

Plus, are you running the pedals through the lead or crunch channel? Because it would be logical that you hear those sounds more through an overdriven amp. Of course, the TSL100 might aswell just be louder...

 

[lpmarshall]

Re: Stompboxes and a Marshall half stack....

Like others suggested, put one pedal in the chain at a time. If it ends up accumulating, I'd suggest a true bypass loop or a noise supressor.

 

[drjones]

Re: Stompboxes and a Marshall half stack....

I've got the TSL60 head, and noticed that my pedals added a lot of hum to the signal. I was running a Boss Tu-2 > Maxon OD9 > Little big muff >DD3 (sometimes). All powered with AC Adaptor. The little big muff add the most hum into the signal, and I mean a lot, almost to the point where its getting to be so annoying that I wont use it. The other pedals add a little noise, but nothing as much as the muff. The muff just magnifyed all the hum. So just check your pedals one at a time.

 

[Gearjoneser]

Re: Stompboxes and a Marshall half stack....

The problem with Boss is that when the pedal is off (and correct me if I'm wrong), the signal is still traveling through it's circuitry.

On my pedalboard, the main signal only travels through a handful of true bypass pedals, and the ones that aren't are on a loop, which I can activate with a button in front. It's a fact of life with most mass produced pedals, but there will be a certain level of hiss. If there wasn't a difference, you wouldn't see people paying $200-$300 for pedals. I can appreciate Boss and L6 modulation FX, but when you compare them to Z. Vex, Moog, or Lovetone, there's a big difference in overall quality of sound, as well as ground floor hiss.

 

[The Golden Boy]

Re: Stompboxes and a Marshall half stack....

What's seriously annoying, especially with some old "vintage" pedals, is the effect being in the "off" signal. I used to have an old MXR Distortion + that was screwing the hell out of my signal. Also my old Maestro Fuzz-Tone.

 

[WhoFan]

Re: Stompboxes and a Marshall half stack....

nothing rubs tone more then my 1977 ColourSound Fuzz/Wah thing... someone gave this thing to me and it has a nice wah sound and the fuzz is not bad either.... but when it is off it is god awful!