Easy Solution To Fix Noisy Guitar Pedals

Inexpensive "universal" AC/DC power adaptors can cause all kinds of noise issues. In this video, I'll show a common "problem" I hear about. Once we dig down to the root of the cause we most commonly find that the noise is due to the power supply not filtering the power as much as we need it to in an audio device.

AZ aff. link to TrueTone One Spot:

[formattmusic]

DUDE, my man. Thank you so much for this video. I have a huge chain of pedals, and I tracked down the noise to two pedals. I tried putting in a buffer and a noise gate, but I couldn't get rid of that noise. I watched your video today, and i realized I had 3 different power supplies running through my pedals, all through a daisy chain. Once you said it almost always can be tracked through the power supply, I took out the other two and use my good one, and then attached all the daisy chain connectors to each last connector, and made a huge chain of power connectors, using the same power supply and that eliminated all of my noise from those two pedals. I got almost all my pedals now sounding like true bypass. This video was a huge help, thank you.

[mountainmanmusic]

Thank you. Nothing worse than a $200 pedal buzzing lmao!✌🏻🎸

[saam]

Dude wasnt lying when he titles the video "One **easy** fix..." dont be cheap when it comes to power supplies.

[Bingopete]

Had a pedal that the power supply made noise via DC input jack, but when hooked to the battery snap it was perfectly quiet. Sometimes that may be a solution for certain pedals. The one I had with that problem was digital if that matters. And whether cheap power or not that's what worked for me.

[onixtheone]

Thanks to your video on cleaning pots with deoxit, my old little green wonder and deep blue delay are no longer making noise!! Thank you!

[blumoe]

Thanks for sharing this vital info! About 2 years ao I bought an Electro-Harmonix Crayon pedel. Until I ran across your YouTube post the pedal been collecting dust as I thought it was defective, as I was utilizing same old 9volt transformer that I'd been using for years. After watching your video inserted a 9-volt battery into it and it worked fine! I serched in my box of electronic parts and found different 9-volt transformer and pedal works fine with it as well...THANKS!!!

[reymonti]

The best supressor of noises on the market is "Donner noise killer pedal", fantastic.

[alexandert]

I once had a power supply that zapped me every time I touched the strings. I kept it around just to have an excuse for being sucky.

[legoharry]

I get turning on my Dracarys and I get this weird noise. It sounds like it’s saying "Buy more Wampler stuff." Any idea how to fix this?

[bradt.]

Another issue u can sometimes have is pedals in both the front end and the effects using the same supply. Some amps the loop and the input jack have a different ground potential and the common power supply creates a ground loop. I always use a separate supply for loop pedals and front of amp pedals. And I've had issues with so called quality pwr supplies too. And times when a pwr supply will run any one pedal fine but when u daisy chain a couple u get noise, then I switched supplies and they chained fine.

[Dr_Satan]

The universal one is a multi tapped transformer and the proper one is a digital switching power supply. It's much easier to get higher current from a switching supply than a transformer too. So depending on how many of what kind of pedals you have in your chain, you can really start taxing a transformer one while it's not even halfway loaded on the switcher.

[markhammer]

One of the difficulties with wall-warts is that they always come as sealed black blobs. If you purchase one that is not explicitly designed to power pedals, you will likely have no idea just how well-regulated it is, and believe me there are a LOT of ways something can be only minimally regulated, have tons of hum, and still "count" as an AC-to-DC convertor. If they were clear, and you could see that it had/lacked the components that would indicate good regulation and a smooth DC output, or if you could open the box and see a schematic, that would be one thing. But basically the only info a wall-wart is going to give you is how many volts (I'll take 9, please), how much current capacity, and which contact is hot and ground. That's a bit like buying an amp and all you know is that it has a volume control, some sort of speaker, and an "on" switch.

Now, having said that, cheap wall-warts you can buy from the "variety box" at the pawn shop CAN be made to provide clean smooth hum-free power with the addition of a few cheap components. But unless you know what you're doing, I'd recommend against it. Besides, as others here have noted, many power-bricks provide decent isolation between outputs, which can be important in today's pedalboards. If you're running a circa-1982 pedalboard, daisy-chain away, my friend. If you have even ONE digital pedal on your board, though, do yourself a favour and spring for a power brick.

[Theweeze]

Love your channel Brian. So, I’ll play in a church that has light dimmers all over the place. Those dimmers seem to create a lot of line noise and every time I press down on my volume pedal I find out just how much noise there is. Going through a clean power filter helps a little, but I’ve just decided to go through a isolated output, switching power supply from Truetone. I’m hoping that this will quiet down the five petals that now share a common power supply via my boss BCB – 60 paddleboard. Wish me luck!

[thecakeisalie]

I have a daisy chain from a single 9V AC adapter. I observed that I had to put the more power hungry pedals like combo reverb and loopers near the root of the daisy chain to avoid noise.

[TomTobin]

I was in a band with a bass player who made himself a tin wall to surround the back of his amp that consisted of a large bent piece of cardboard, covered in aluminum foil. It worked somewhat.

[xcrow]

I have a PowerAll brand wallwart with a 5 spot daisy chain. It’s dead silent. In fact, it’s better than the MXR iso brick, OneSpot and Voodoo lab power supply I used to have.

[Lustrum]

I'm glad I watched this video. Switching up all my cheap universal power adaptors for the proper brand name power adaptors of my pedals really does work, all the electrical static noise that I thought was normal all my life is now gone. I also noticed one day that the cheap universal adaptor I was using would arch whenever the 9 Volt cable on the adaptor would touch the metal casing of the guitar pedal, after seeing those sparks I knew I had to stop using them and follow the advice in this video.

[anthonydiaz]

I have a question, I connected my boss chromatic tuner tu-2 to boss distortion DS-1 to a ISP Decimator II noise pedal to a vox 50 watt combo amp. When I plug em together, I connect my guitar to the tuner that connects to distortion pedal to noise pedal to amp & I get these random radio feedback that dramatically takes over my entire guitar sound & volume to a point I hear the news more clearly than my guitar. What is the issue & what should I do exactly? Is there an order of pedals I should be using instead or? 🤨

[andraraka]

I like when you said "nomonoise!" "nomonoise!"

[NIGHTVISIONENGAGED]

Dude! I was so damn frustrated with the noise my fuzz pedal was making. I tried everything...

Thank you so much for your video. I order a direct plug in power supply like you suggested and the noise was completely gone!

Again, thank you for your video!

Keep it up!

Thanks a million!