Noisy pedals - in BYPASS! argh

Gear
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After my last board build I noticed I was getting a lot more noise than I had before.
Granted, it is a long chain, but had not heard this prior (hiss).

After some very methodical testing, I found three pedals to be the culprits, and they were all culprits IN BYPASS mode.

  1. Gamechanger Light (reverb) and Bigsby - I had not noticed the noise prior in either but man it is there, even in isolation (tuner and it in the chain). Annoying but workable. I emailed them but since they are mostly guitar pedals I suspect they can be noisy and those guys don’t care.

  2. Here is the really bad offender - Walrus Audio Lore - and here is the weird thing…
    Plug it in power everything up - noisey hiss. Engage pedal, loads of noise////disengage pedal, the ‘loads of noise’ from when it was engaged stays! argh! In doing some research this is a complaint of many Walrus Audio pedals I guess.

I have emails into both to see that is what.
But shouldn’t a bypass be just that?
Shoudn’t it add nothing (nor take away for that matter)?

Is there some sort of noise gate pedal I could get to drop out this hiss?

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@John_E how do you power your strobe tuner 9v or usb? If usb that’s where the hiss came from. It took me a while and I finally figure it out.

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no, all are powered from Pedal Power Plus 3 or X8.
Hiss is only from the pedals listed above, all other pedals (even in the long long chain) are noise free.
I am ok with some noise when you engage a pedal, but bypass----- no thanks.

PS - yes, any USB plugged in to any pedal seems to make for a noisy mess, learned that one a while ago. The USB cables are landed just off to the right of the board in case I want to program the ones that use USB.

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What’s pedal #3?

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Are these pedals buffered bypass ot true bypass?

Since you have a long chain do you have at least one buffered bypass pedal (or an always on pedal early in the chain?)

If they are true bypass is the sound still there if you unplug them while bypassed?

Are you absolutely sure your PSU is isolated ground? What happens if those pedals are on batteries?

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This happens even with just one of these pedals in isolation, with the Peterson tuner before it. Tuner is in buffered monitor mode (always on). Also happens if each is the only pedal (without tuner).

None of these offenders take batteries.

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Are they true bypass, and if so, what happens if you unplug them? I would assume no hiss.

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Tuner and offender in chain only…

Lore and Light - no sound passes through when unplugged

Bigsby - greatly dropped gain but sound passes when unplugged.

I think it’s a bypass circuit issue.

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I think you’re right. Lore and Light is clearly buffered, and the other one sounds like a very bad true bypass if it is affected by the power.

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My delay and reverb from Walrus produce some slight white noise (this is normal). Not sure with bypass since I use a loop switcher.

For some reason my reverb gave a terrible hiss too this weekend. Apparently I had too many pedals daisy chained. I just ordered a decent power adapter to fix this issue.

The weird thing is that the chain was completely fine before. :man_shrugging:t2:

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Yes this is my issue, was fine, ain’t now.
I’m not daisychaining btw.

Driving me nuts.

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This could be because the Bigsby is never truly bypassed (sorry I was misleading here). It’s an always on pedal. This one I just chalk up to being noisy.

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Ugh. Well, unless you find yourself frequently wanting a pitch-shifting expression pedal, you can probably just lose that one. Cool looking pedal but I’d kick it to the curb if it were adding noise.

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It’s the least offending of the three, just can’t keep it in the chain all the time, which is fine. I’m more concerned with the other two. The light pedal has been in my chain for a long time and fine, and I use it a lot.
The Lore I had big plans for, and it’s past return window. Hoping they can correct the issue.

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Hmm yeah, me too. Bummer.

Buffered bypass is usually fine but it sounds like this one has serious issues.

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@howard - here are the videos I just made to send to the manufacturers.
Note, hiss in ‘clean mode’ with just tuner sounds really loud, it isn’t.
The iphone apparently has an inner talent to pick up high pitched noises very well, lol.

But you get the idea.

https://youtu.be/Qa8bwH85YEA
https://youtu.be/HhiLtO0RIsk

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The LORE is going back for “repair”.
Nice folks.
They say a 1-2 day turnaround.

Still awaiting the Gamechanger boys to evaluate the video I sent.

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cool!

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hey @John_E , sorry I haven’t read the whole thread but two ideas comes to me :

  • one pedal can have some sort of bad design and it makes it prone to capture and enhance the ambiant noise. not a good choice.
  • you could have a ground loop in your power supply. it’s very possibly this. in my experience, this kind of problem is often a ground loop. (but not always)
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Same happens when powered on a One-Spot by itself.
So unless the ground loop is in the house outlet and not effecting anything else……I am still going to lean towards a faulty bypass circuit.

The Walrus Audio folks are agreeing with the theory, at least at this point.

On the Gamechanger Light pedal, this is pedal #2. When I got it in the very beginning they had a bad batch of pedals that wouldn’t latch on / off on the bypass switch.
My hunch is that their ‘fix’ was duct tape and not solving the real issue.

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