My friend plugged into my board with a balanced TRS cable the other day and it took me ages to find out why my rig was so noisy, anyway, after swapping the lead I noticed my rig still had quite a lot of nose and I noticed all the pedals on my board pop very loudly (a mixture os Strymon, EHX, MXR, Ibanez etc.).
Noting this was quite strange I auditioned each pedal separately with an MXR Isobrick, Voodoo Lab PP2 and a signal wall wart.
All pedals produced a loud pop regardless of amp gain. I first thought it was the high volume/gain combination of my Marshall Plexi (20w Studio Head) but I tried the same test through my Vox AC15C1 and while the pops was nowhere near as loud, they were still there. Granted most are true bypass I tested them enough to discharge any static build up to no avail.
Is there a grounding issue I'm unaware of or is the electricity in my place really bad? The Marshall does have a lot of idle hiss when off standby with even the smallest amount of volume.
I'd normally be able to diagnose this but I'm having a tough time isolating the cause of it.
I beseech your wisdom.
Comments
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
What happens if you put the Boss last?
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Sounds like you may have poor earthing in the mains supply.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
That will work, but if you like the pedals you've got, perhaps not the best suggestion .
How are you plugging it all into the wall? If you're not using an extension strip, try getting one with surge/spike protection built in and run everything from it - that might be enough to stop it.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
They're frequently thrown together as piecework by home workers with no interest in or knowledge of things like strain relief.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Socket tester like the one show above will verify if a voltage can be made across the live and cpc terminal of the socket outlet being tested. Generally any voltage will result in a positive led as the current used to determine this connection is incredibly small and therefore a much greater than acceptable impedance to earth is tolerated (Ohms law).
Where a house doesn’t have rcds installed for fault protection and fuses or mcbs are relied on for fault protection, typically an acceptable earth impedance at the socket outlet should be no greater than approximately 1ohm. Professional electricians have equipment to test this and any competent spark will be able to verify if your earth connection is satisfactory or not.
Different earthing facilities will be different with the most common in the UK being PME where outside the installation the earth and neutral are combined. noise on the neutral could be introduced on the cpc and generate noise within your installation.
if you do suspect there’s an issue with your earthing though I would recommend you get an electrician soon as an earth problem can be seriously bad for your health!!!
I’m having the same popping issues with pedals in both my studio and my home. I can’t imagine there’s serious earth issues with either and there’s RCD’s in both premises.
I’d be more inclined to know why a poor ground would make pedals pop and what actually constitutes poor grounding. I’m under the impression a circuit is either grounded or it isn’t?
A small amount of resistance in the earth connection can be enough. Many modern amps in fact intentionally have this, in order to prevent ground loops which cause hum - it may be enough to be causing this problem, although I wouldn't have expected it to. If so, you could try using a mains-powered effect unit of some sort which is definitely fully grounded, and see if that fixes it - if it does, it would be fairly easy to modify the amp to connect the signal ground directly to the chassis ground. (Many bass amps have ground switches to do that because ground loops are a common problem when DI'ing.)
[Rant] Fundamentally the problem is pedals with mechanical switching in the signal path! Dinosaur technology that's been obsolete for forty years, and one of the reasons proper buffered switching was introduced in the first place... [/rant]
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein