Harley Benton TU100 woes

[Beer of the Bass]

I'm re-jigging my pedal board, which is going to consist of just my home built valve overdrive (which can be found in the build diaries section), my Univox Super Fuzz clone and a tuner pedal. My power supply for the fuzz and tuner is one of the discontinued Johnny Shredfreak ones, with a daisy chain cable. At the moment my tuner is a Harley Benton TU100 cheapie from Thomann which works very well by itself. However, I thought people might like a heads-up that this tuner does not behave well when the power supply daisy chained with other pedals, either using a daisy chain cable or the power-through socket. It seems like the tuner is dumping a load of noise on the power supply ground, causing a layer of really nasty noise when the fuzz is switched on. If I run them both off the same battery using the tuner's power-through socket (ruling out the PSU), I still get the noise, but if I run one or both of them off a battery without the daisy chain, the noise stops, suggesting that the power supply link between the two is causing the problem. I'm not about to fork out on an isolated power supply just to make my £20 tuner work, so I just thought I'd make it known; don't buy this tuner if you want to daisy chain your power supply! Are there any cheap-ish tuners known to work OK with daisy-chained supplies?

Edited April 22, 2013 by Beer of the Bass

[Truckstop]

Artec Big Dots is a great tuner. Cost me £27 5 years ago and it's been going strong ever since. Tracks the B harmonic just fine.

One annoying thing is that the power supply socket is on the side of the pedal rather than the top which makes it difficult to arrange on a pedal board sometimes! But perfectly robust, well built and looks great on stage. Alternatively, clip on tuners are pretty decent and cheap but obviously don't mute the instrument.

Truckstop

[Beer of the Bass]

Ah, googling around, it's apparently quite common when daisy-chaining tuners or other digital pedals with analogue pedals, especially gainy ones. People have reported the same thing with the Boss TU-2 or TC Polytune. So the HB may not be unique in having this problem. It's still a pain though!

Edited April 22, 2013 by Beer of the Bass

[paul_5]

I'd recommend powering the valve pedal with its own supply. It won't solve your noise issue, but those bad boys draw MASSIVE amounts of current!

[Beer of the Bass]

[quote name='paul_5' timestamp='1366643046' post='2055337']
I'd recommend powering the valve pedal with its own supply. It won't solve your noise issue, but those bad boys draw MASSIVE amounts of current!
[/quote]
The valve pedal is mains powered, so no worries there. It occurs me that if I was going to abandon pedal tuners entirely and have the fuzz as the only 9v powered box, I'd almost be as well sticking with ye olde PP3s for the fuzz...

[mcnach]

[quote name='Beer of the Bass' timestamp='1366643230' post='2055342']
The valve pedal is mains powered, so no worries there. It occurs me that if I was going to abandon pedal tuners entirely and have the fuzz as the only 9v powered box, I'd almost be as well sticking with ye olde PP3s for the fuzz...
[/quote]

The problem with using batteries in a pedal board is you have to remember to unplug them all when not in use.
The tuner should last a long time on a battery, I'd imagine. I have a Korg DT-10 in my gig bag for I don't know how long on the same battery... I imagine it will still draw current when plugged in, but as you'd normally use a tuner first in the chain, you'd probably not forget to unplug your guitar cable from it. At least if, like me, you have the habit of always unplugging the instrument cable at both ends... hmmm.

[Beer of the Bass]

I think the most elegant solution will either be a different tuner or the diago isolator adaptor [url="http://www.diago.co.uk/adaptors/isolator.html"]http://www.diago.co....s/isolator.html[/url]
If I was to go the different tuner route, I'd have to bring my pedalboard to the shop and try the tuners together with my setup to be certain it'll do the job, which might be a bit of a faff. I think part of the issue is that the Super Fuzz is so gainy that it's particularly sensitive to power supply mankiness. I could also sell the Johnny Shredfreak PSU and get one of these with isolated outputs; [url="http://www.thomann.de/gb/harley_benton_powerplant_junior.htm"]http://www.thomann.d...lant_junior.htm[/url]

Edited April 24, 2013 by Beer of the Bass

[Beer of the Bass]

I have managed to sort out my noise issues by changing my power supply for one of these; [url="http://www.thomann.de/gb/harley_benton_powerplant_junior.htm"]http://www.thomann.d...lant_junior.htm[/url] Even with shipping from Germany, it's about the cheapest isolated supply out there and is quite small and neat. I've got everything velcroed to a plastic chopping board from Poundstretcher! It still gave me a little mains frequency hum when using the Super Fuzz, but adding a 100 ohm resistor in line with the power socket inside the Fuzz, along with a 100uF capacitor to ground sorted that out by adding some extra filtering.

Edited May 5, 2013 by Beer of the Bass