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Overcoming noise from Daisy Chains???


Marvin
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Has anyone found any little gadgets, gizmos, sockets, plugs etc that can overcome the potential noise, buzzes, clangs, bangs etc you can get from daisy chaining effects pedals.

I've only got 4 pedals, one of those is a tuner, and buying something like a Voodo Labs set up seems a bit ott.

Ta

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Either: find out which pedal(s) are causing issues and use a separate supply for any of those
Or go with isolated supply outputs for each pedal - a better solution - suggest Thommann Powerplant Junior 5 x 9V outs if that fits the bill. Note has to be the smaller Junior unit.
Assuming current supply has enough current for the four pedals.

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Also make sure your patch cables are decent. I had noise issues, invested in a Cioks DC5 (which is brilliant by the way), and when I rebuilt my board testing each element in isolation I found my noise issue was due to the poor shielding in EBS patch cables picking up noise from my dimmer switch.

There are two main issues you get with daisy chains. If a pedal has positive ground / reverse polarity it can either introduce really obvious loud buzzing / squealing sounds or cut out sound altogether. Secondly, and more commonly, some digital pedals might leak noise into the daisy chain which is then picked up by other pedals in the chain. To test this out, put all your known good analog pedals in a chain and then try introducing one digital pedal at a time. Listen for increased hiss, or digital clock noise which sounds like chirping - you might not even have to put the pedal in the audio path to get this, just have it on the daisy chain.

A true bypass looper is useful for testing to see if any long leads or patch cables are the culprit also, you can pick one up for about £15 and you might find it useful later on if you want to use a pedal that doesn't have a great sounding bypass, or as a patch bay to escape your entire fx chain in case something dies on you!

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[quote name='dannybuoy' timestamp='1483695558' post='3209280']
Secondly, and more commonly, some digital pedals might leak noise into the daisy chain which is then picked up by other pedals in the chain. To test this out, put all your known good analog pedals in a chain and then try introducing one digital pedal at a time. Listen for increased hiss, or digital clock noise which sounds like chirping - you might not even have to put the pedal in the audio path to get this, just have it on the daisy chain.
[/quote]

If a digital pedal is creating clock noise on a shared daisy chain, it may be worth threading its power lead a few times through a ferrite core. This creates a small inductance that is invisible to the DC supply, but presents a very high impedance to the problem frequencies. Although these frequencies are too high for us to hear, they can heterodyne with other signals to produce audible noise (sticking my neck out with that one!)

You can get clip-on ferrite cores for a couple of quid from [url="http://www.maplin.co.uk/p/ferrite-clip-on-hem3012-n89ab"]Maplin[/url]:

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Voodoo Labs, Gigrig, Cioks etc.

Not over kill at all. Proper isolated power and all well built. A good power supply is definitely one of those 'buy it once' and stop worrying about it type things. In fact I've got the VL PP2 on my small board and the Gigrig system on my silly large board. Painful to buy, and yet zero buyers remorse.

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