So I just got my Behringer TO800 overdrive pedal in the mail and started playing with it today. The chain is Fender Standard Strat HSS (livewire instrument cable)-->TO800 (short patch cable)-->Fender Blues Junior (with Weber Mini Mass 25W attenuator). I noticed that for moderate to high drive settings on the pedal, and with the level set so that the overall volume is the same with the drive on or in bypass mode, I hear a lot more 60 cycle hum with the pedal on than off. I even hear some hum with the pickup selector in a mixed position, or set to the humbucker. I have yet to be scientific about it, but my impression is that this is the case regardless of the amp settings. Does this seem normal to all you overdrive pedal users out there?
Thanks,
Sam
P.S. I cannot believe the amount of tonal and volume control I have at my disposal now. I have tone, volume, and pickup selection on the guitar, tone, drive, and level on the pedal, treble, mid, bass, gain and master on the amp, and treble boost and volume on the attenuator. How I'll make sense of all of it I have no idea, but it's certainly tantalizing. And god knows what gear I'll convince myself I should buy next, before figuring out all the stuff I already have.
~Sam
now that you have one pedal you will begin to get GAS. that is good.
tone quest is fun. you get to try all kinds of pedals and discover how noisy some of them are.
I have no experience with your pedal, but my tubescreamer does not add anything to my single coil but cool tone.
Are you using a battery or wallwort to power it? Some pedals hum due to 60 or 120 Hz ripple on "DC" wallworts. If this is the case, even though the fault is in the pedal design (should reject the ripple) a better power supply or simply using a battery all the time will improve the issue.
If it is your guitar that is producing some hum (single coils usually, P90s notoriously), then the gain boost from the pedal will make this worse. Solutions: Use humbucker guitar; shield your guitar; use a single coil pup guitar with reverse-wound, reverse-magnet single pups and set to bridge + neck (or bridge + middle or neck + middle, if a modern Strat); use a noise gate.
-=tension & release=-
Well, you know I am a big promoter of the TO800. I have never had noise problems with it until....
I got my Blues Jr. :D
I love the Blues Jr., I think it is an awesome amp. But it is a little noisy. I have gone to BillM's mod site for the Blues Jr and he writes quite a bit about this subject. I have many other amps and the Blues Jr. hums more than any of my other amps.
And many pedals will increase this hum. I noticed that almost all my pedals increased this hum to a degree, the TO800 added a little more hum than the others, but most overdrive and distortion pedals will do this.
Here is BillM's site on Blues Jr. mods. Great site with lots of helpful info. Here is the page about the hum this amp experiences.
http://home.comcast.net/~machrone/bjr/bjrhum.htm
I still think the BJ is a great amp, I love the tone. I can handle a little hum. I have thought about one of these:
If you know something better than Rock and Roll, I'd like to hear it - Jerry Lee Lewis
Since my last post I have spent about a week experimenting with my Blues Jr. and different effects pedals. I found the Blues Jr. to be fairly quiet when Volume is kept low and Master is turned up. However, the more you turn up Volume which boosts the preamp, the more noise this amp makes. I love to turn Volume way up from 7-12 to get a great overdriven tone. When Master is kept low there is almost no noise at all. But once you get Master up above 3 or so you get a lot of hum. I compared this against my Marshall DSL401's clean channel. On the Marshall, volume is called Gain, which is more correct. The Volume on the Blues Jr. is really a gain control, that is why you get overdriven tones at higher settings. To the Blues Jr.'s credit, my Marshall actually makes more noise when Gain is turned to high settings.
With Volume on low settings none of my pedals seemed to introduce any noise to the amp. However, once I cranked Volume up (which is really gain), several pedals added noise when turned on. The Behringer TO800 was actually very quiet and introduced very little additional noise. My Seymour Duncan Pickup Booster added slightly more noise than the Behringer. My Marshall Guv'nor Plus 2 pedal added a lot of noise, much more than the Behringer or Seymour Duncan pedals. Effects like chorus and phase added almost no noise, my EQ pedal added a hint of noise, and my BBE Sonic Stomp amazingly did not add any noise at all.
I believe the noise you are hearing is really the amp, but overdrive or distortion pedals will boost the signal to the preamp which will necessarily increase the noise. This is not unusual at all and this is why many add a Noise Suppressor to their effects chain to eliminate hum and noise when not playing.
If you know something better than Rock and Roll, I'd like to hear it - Jerry Lee Lewis
