Electrical Noise - EQD Hummingbird

UnclePsychosisUnclePsychosis Frets: 12880
edited March 2018 in FX

Hey folks

I've got a (V3) EQD Hummingbird which has an irritating noise problem.

Symptoms are as follows:

  1. When bypassed there are no problems.
  2. When on, I can hear the LFO ticking faintly at all settings.
  3. When on, there is an electrical "whine" that increases with the Depth control. At max depth its really loud. No chance it can be ignored
  4. The "level" control doesn't affect the whine: only the depth control changes it.
  5. The hummingbird doesn't support a battery connection but I've tried it on its own isolated connection from my power supply, as well as running in it from two complete separate 9V supplies with nothing else attached (i.e. three supplies that are isolated). The only change between the three is that the whine changes pitch/timbre a bit.
  6. Problem persists even if it is the the only pedal in the chain.

Now, the thing I haven't tried yet is moving my setup to a different room/plug socket. That's tonight's task.

I've heard that the Hummingbird can be susceptible to noise (since its based on the Vox Repeat Percussion which was notorious for it) but this seems excessive.

Any ideas for why this might be so bad and why my other pedals don't seem to be affected?


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Comments

  • Magnetic_EffectsMagnetic_Effects Frets: 135
    edited March 2018 tFB Trader
    LFO ticking can be a problem with the Repeat Percussion circuit but the whining noise you have described is not typical. 
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  • UnclePsychosisUnclePsychosis Frets: 12880
    OK, a bit of digging this evening.

    Problem was replicated in a different room on a different amp. With my 1-spot it was very clearly a grounding / 50 hz hum issue of some kind. 

    So I took the back off and did some prodding. I noticed that rotating the input jack a little seemed to make things a lot better - does the circuit ground on the enclosure? Would that explain the issue? @icbm this is maybe the same issue as I had with that Os-2?
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  • UnclePsychosisUnclePsychosis Frets: 12880

    OK, so I managed to improve the whine a little by tightening the input jack but it's still there (along with the clock noise) and it now also picks up a lot of radio station interference. As is, it's unusable which is really annoying because I really love theactual effect!!
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  • UnclePsychosisUnclePsychosis Frets: 12880
    Bah.

    Tried it at practice. Same power supply, different environment. No noise at all. 

    Let the wandering around the house switching everything off begin! 
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  • UnclePsychosisUnclePsychosis Frets: 12880
    edited March 2018

    @Magnetic_Effects out of interest, is it still possible to buy an Electrochop? 

    I couldn't see it on your website. Cheers. 
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  • Magnetic_EffectsMagnetic_Effects Frets: 135
    tFB Trader
    @UnclePsychosis Yes, it is temporarily out of the mainline up but still available as a custom order. PM or email me if interested and I can give you the details. 
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  • UnclePsychosisUnclePsychosis Frets: 12880
    For the benefit of future readers getting a good quality isolated supply seems to have sorted it all out. Think the earth connection in my house is noisy as hell. 
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  • crunchmancrunchman Frets: 11413
    For the benefit of future readers getting a good quality isolated supply seems to have sorted it all out. Think the earth connection in my house is noisy as hell. 
    Was about to suggest a decent power supply but you seem to have figured it out for yourself.

    It's not worth skimping on the power supply. I've had 4 over the years.  Should have just bought a decent one the first time, and would have saved quite a lot of money.
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