Pedal HISS - snakePOWER supply

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Last Post by gnease 14 years ago

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Kelvin

(@kelvin)

New Member

Joined: 14 years ago

Posts: 1

Topic starter 12/12/2009 5:34 am

Hey there,

I've got a really basic line-up ---> GUITAR - COMPRESSION SUSTAINER - WAH - AMP WITH OD

The problem is the common hiss noise. As usual the hiss is amplified with higher sustain, compression, gain and when the WAH is fully pressed.

I have to have the two pedals daisy chained to a regular unregulated wall wart. I actually have two of these regular wall warts, BUT - when I power the 2 pedals individually, the WAH DOES NOT turn on at all!

So my questions are:

If anyone's heard of snakePOWER (isolated, not sure if it's regulated. see http://www.pedalsnake.com/osCommerce/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=27_34&products_id=40 ) would i be able to utilize it to solve the noise (I'm reluctant to resort to buying T-Rex or Voodoo Lab because i only have 2 pedals to power)?

Is there a reason why my WAH can only be powered when daisy chained to another pedal?

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gnease

(@gnease)

Illustrious Member

Joined: 20 years ago

Posts: 5038

12/12/2009 6:03 pm

several things come to mind:

* have you tried both power supplies (each alone) on the wah? sometimes it's the connector -- possibly different on the two supplies, as some are close enough to mate mechanically, but don't do it electrically.

*could also be the wah draws to little current to allow the supply to regulate properly -- a bad supply design, but that does happen.

* broken ground connection somewhere, that is completed by a sneak path when you daisy power and/or connect signal ins and outs

hiss (sizzling, wideband noise of some sort) is not usually

a power supply issue -- supplies usually cause hum (60 and 120 Hz in the US) or whining at some annoying higher freq. hiss usually comes from an active stage, e.g., an amplifier, DSP processor or filter. does your guitar have active pups? )is there a battery in your guitar?). if so, might be time to change it. since the wah comes after the compressor, I wouldn't expect it's noise to change or vary with the compressor operation, unless the compressor output impedance changes radically between on/off (seems very unlikely).

*some supplies "whiten" their internal switching clocks, converting the classic switching whine to more of a hiss, but this is probably not what you are experiencing. if by chance it is a power supply hiss, you can check this on battery operation. most pedals are as quiet as they will get on battery (vs. external power).

isolation in power supplies doesn't usually fix hiss, it helps reduce the hum caused by ground loops. the snakePower might be okay -- I dunno, but it appears to be a transformer + linear regulated power supply. that may be fine, but I wouldn't expected it to fix hiss.

interesting problems -- let us know how this turns out.

-=tension & release=-

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