Red Panda Tensor Problem

[olliedf89]

Hi all, I recently saved up all my pennies and bought myself a Tensor for a bit of fun. It's bloody amazing! I thoroughly recommend everyone at least tries one at some point, it's wicked.

Ive noticed a problem, however, that in a certain mode in combination with certain knob twiddles (it's a complicated pedal) I'm getting a clipping/distorted sound, like a dodgy cable or connection. Now the pedal works fine and does what it should do, but every time I switch to this mode (which happens to be my favourite so far) it clips and fizzles like the speaker cant take the sound. Now I've tried everything you normally would- cables/amps/power supplies/basses/firmware update etc etc and it still does it. The settings are NXT mode with sound captured, with both Rand and Time engaged, it is MUCH more apparent when I use the expression pedal to bring in these controls, though does it without it. It happens erratically and I can't actively trigger it to happen- also not to be confused with the glitchy purposeful pops that can be found. Being a brand new pedal I haven't opened it up or anything just yet.

However, I shot Red Panda a message (as it's such a complicated and expensive little pedal and it did get sent from DV247- now in Germany) because I wanted to be sure I wasn't doing anything wrong.

Andy at Red Panda has been very helpful and informed me it was likely that it wasn't receiving the correct mA, which is stated to be 250mA on the rear of the pedal and Andy himself said it runs better closer to 300mA, especially when using a lot of the features as there is more headroom and less chance of it breaking up. Fine, some pedals need that, however, I don't have a power supply that will give me that (he suggested using a onespot- though I haven't heard great things about them and don't really wanna drop £20 on one just for the sake of it) and I've run through a standard 9v Boss power supply (200mA) and a Voodoo Labs Pedal Power 2 (which has options from 100mA to 250mA) but none of these seem to work.

"you will need to use a larger mA power supply. A lot of power supplies are supplying just under what it claims it can do and the power can waver, and so Tensor needs to be fed with over 250 mA to operate at its best and not break up when using full power. Do you think you could borrow a one-spot or something to try this?"

My fears (and hopes to some extent) are that it is faulty, but if it ISNT and this is just how the pedal works, can anyone tell me? I don't want to return it and swap it for a new one just to find the same problem, but I also don't feel I would regularly use a pedal that requires SUCH specific power that it wont work with one of the most widely available power supplies in use- which never gives me trouble by the way. I mean part of the reason I dropped £300 on this and not £250 on the Pigtronix Mothership was that I wouldn't need a different power supply for just one pedal.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated!!!

 

EDIT:
I got a onespot. still made the noise. RP confirmed they used same Voodoo Labs power supply anyway and I surmised that the unit was faulty after all, return is all sorted and fingers crossed for a new working Tensor next week or two! boom.

Edited November 18, 2018 by olliedf89

[itu]

Well, I have seen and felt similar problems with certain pedals. A fuzz or an od needs just few mA, while some DSP based units may need nearly 500 mA. In a pedal format, yes.

Some distortion/od/fuzzes like this "battery dead" type of use but not anything that is far more complicated and/or digital. The situation could be compared to a Ferrari with a Trabant motor. Cool looks, sad sound and terrible performance.

A powerful transformer can be a low cost unit after all, so please consider carefully if you really are unable to invest few coins to one. I have three of those cheapo onespots for three boards.