Effect/OD/Dist noise

Gwydion

Hi everyone, just a quick one, my setup of my pedalboard is as follows:

guitar-polytune-wah- noise suppressor INPUT - NS Send to metal zone - power stack - tubescreamer - NS Return - NS OUTPUT - chorus - Compressor - Volume pedal - Amp

Now before I added my NS to my chain the gain and noise was fcking intense... added the NS, setup up the threshold an all to what I wanted and it works like a charm killing the noise almost immediately which is cool. Question is : Is this normal? these are High gain pedals *MT-2 & Power Stack* they are basically the problem... is it normal for all that noise without the NS?

What influence does patch cables and power supplies have on noise? I don't use a brick, I bought a 9V -1000mA power supply at a music shop that had 5 adapter cables coming out of it. That with a combination of batteries is what I am using.

Is there a better way I should rig my pedal chain to stop this? Reason for adding the way I have is as obviously git to tuner to wah is obvious. Then I added the NS to use the send and receive function on the OD/Dist pedals. from there into my chorus and then my comp. I am using the comp as a boost for solos etc. Volume pedal last, that way I can use it as a "true" volume pedal that wont influence my gain. All of this goes into my valve amp, either my TSH or Crate.

Please help me out here.

Cheers

Kalcium

Ordinarily with excessive noise the power supply is the first thing to look at, but since you bought it at a music shop I'm assuming it is regulated and not one of those cheap universal dc power supplies you get at game etc...

1 question though is how is the signal to noise ratio? I.e compared to the loudness of actually playing through the amp, how loud is the noise? It is normal for there to be noise when adding a lot of gain as any tiny noise gets amplified, but compared to the volume of whats coming through the amp this should be minimal, if not then there is a problem somewhere. That being said it seems when playing really high gain stuff for metal I think noise gates/suppressors are fairly common.

Reinecke

It al depends! What are you using? how loud is it? Do you run single coils? How close to the amp are you? Most pedals, with that much gain, will cause a fair amount of noise either way! Some pedals are just more noisy than other! Well either way, the noise is gone now so you can be happy, no matter what caused the noise!

warrenpridgeon

Reinecke wrote: It al depends! What are you using? how loud is it? Do you run single coils? How close to the amp are you? Most pedals, with that much gain, will cause a fair amount of noise either way! Some pedals are just more noisy than other! Well either way, the noise is gone now so you can be happy, no matter what caused the noise!

I have a nice "unshielded" guitar... my epiphone les paul seems to pic up the sound of the CPU on my laptop processing or something... cos if I am jamming with a little gain and turn the guitar a certain way while standing closish to the laptop I start picking up weird sounds... lol... no pc close by... no problems...

Also... check your power... and see if you can identify one specific pedal doing it... switch off the lights in the room... if it doesn't seem to be any one specific pedal it could just be the amount of gain you are running.

AlanRatcliffe

In high gain situations everything makes a difference to noise levels. Whatever noise is induced in the pickups, control cavity, cabling (quality and length), plugs and even the effects themselves will be amplified a thousandfold by the gain/drive stages. Same goes for any noise induced by a power supply. The earlier in a chain a noisy device/cable is, the more impact it will have on the noise level.

Just because a PSU comes from a music store and is regulated, doesn't mean the power is smoothed and filtered enough to make it as quiet as it could be. Daisy chaining power can introduce earth loops which can also cause problems with noise. Also note that many cheaper "boxed" PSUs simply daisy chain the outputs together internally, which is a far cry from your top supplies that have multiple transformer taps, regulators and output smoothing.

Noise gates help, but only so much before they start affecting the sound. As with all audio, avoiding the problem at the source is better than trying to fix it later in the chain.

warrenpridgeon

Alan Ratcliffe wrote: In high gain situations everything makes a difference to noise levels. Whatever noise is induced in the pickups, control cavity, cabling (quality and length), plugs and even the effects themselves will be amplified a thousandfold by the gain/drive stages. Same goes for any noise induced by a power supply. The earlier in a chain a noisy device/cable is, the more impact it will have on the noise level.

Just because a PSU comes from a music store and is regulated, doesn't mean the power is smoothed and filtered enough to make it as quiet as it could be. Daisy chaining power can introduce earth loops which can also cause problems with noise. Also note that many cheaper "boxed" PSUs simply daisy chain the outputs together internally, which is a far cry from your top supplies that have multiple transformer taps, regulators and output smoothing.

Noise gates help, but only so much before they start affecting the sound. As with all audio, avoiding the problem at the source is better than trying to fix it later in the chain.

I am shopping around for a decent pedal power supply... but my current pedal setup requires one of the beastly ones as I have TC electronics Pedals which require 12v and a different one requiring 9v and a Radial Pedal requiring 15v.

But yeah... high gain always means extra care with everything...

Gwydion

Cool thanks for the input.. the power supply I must admit im not 100% comfy with.. it IS an elcheapo power supply and I suspect only daisy chained.. but anyhoo, I had a feeling it mite be a way my chain is setup etc.

peterleroux

Try putting batteries into your OD/distortion pedals and see if that cleans the noise up. If it does, you know it's something t odo with power- either Eskom, your power supply, or power cables

AlanRatcliffe

Gwydion wrote: I had a feeling it mite be a way my chain is setup etc.

It's unusual to use a compressor as a booster and if you are not careful, that can boost the noise too, but if that was the big problem, you would notice it when you turned it on.

Power supply issues are more likely to cause hum than hiss, BTW, but some pedals can be noisier if the voltage supply is low.

Simplest method to figure out what's going on is to eliminate everything, go straight from guitar to amp to see if there is any problem with just that setup. Try a different guitar (maybe something with active pickups as they are usually pretty quiet, even if the guitar isn't properly shielded). Then try each of the pedals alone with nothing else, one by one. Pay particular attention to the wah pedal, as a little noise there will be boosted horribly by the drives later in the chain. A lot of wahs aren't true bypass and some have horrible buffers.