6 Tips for a Quieter Pedalboard

Mason Marangella from Vertex Effects shares six easy tips for reducing noise in your pedalboard.

#Sweetwater #QuieterPedalboard

[sweetwater]

Easy tips to ensure your pedalboard only makes the noises you want! Catch more tips and tricks like these by subscribing to our channel!

[rgr]

Hello I'm Mason Marangella, owner of Vertex Effects, The Rig Doctor, the First of My Name, King of the Andals and the First Men, Protector of the Seven Kingdoms, the Father of Dragons, the Khal of the Great Grass Sea, the Unburnt, the Breaker of Chains! xD

[charlesb]

I did a 4 year electronics course and a year of electrical, this was just common sense to me. My board is tidy and all cables and power run underneath and cable ties. I've been running an older MXR dc power brick. It's placed on the top left of the board, mounted underneath as well. I did however put a RF choke on the in coming ac line for it. Haven't had any noise issues from the board. I run 2 amps in stereo through a Earthquaker Swissthings (amazing pedal!).
This issue for me was a phase issue from the 2 amps, but the Swissthings took care of that. I also bought heavy duty power cables for both amps that had better shielding and larger gauge wires. I run everything through the same power conditioner to keep things a common ground. This seems to work very well! It's always the small things that can make a huge difference.
Great video content!

[irubberyouglueonethousand]

0:20 power
2:42
3:47 routing
4:55 keep power in isolated part of board
6:10 audio x power cables

[MAP]

I had a noisy pedal one time. The only reason it was noisy was because the DC power supply plug was grounding out from the ring of the power plug was touching the enclosure & causing some wired ground loop. All I had to do was loosen all the screws & jacks & then maneuver the enclosure until it was properly centered & then slowly re-tighten the jacks & screws. Now it works perfect. I guess I got lucky.

[shawnmills]

Thanks for the tips! I am in the process of reconfiguring my board and will take these tips to heart.

[zorlac]

You can put (wrap, paint etc..)shielding around your older supply if it has a transformer and is causing issues

[johnnyguitar-uuzr]

HI mason, i have a weird problem hope you have a suggestion > My tube amp is super quiet when i go direct into it, when i put in the cable from the pedal board WITHOUT any pedals turned On, i am getting very loud noise/hum...without any volume on also from pedal.. ?? don't get it .. Help ???

[spektor]

I find this kind of content most useful when it focuses my attention on things I need to worry about. And while I am a fan of Sweetwater, I don't think casting doubt on pro quality power supplies like the Voodoo Lab PP2+ or solderless cables was a good use of my time. Also, I would feel more comfortable if these recommendations came from a different spokesperson.

[Boomsterblak]

Awesome, best teacher for pedals..great info.

[johnhutchinson]

I know you as the guy who rebranded a BBE wah and sold it as your own for $400. Sweetwater should know this too and not associate with the likes of you. No room for D-bags in the pedal game. Not cool!

[terrymiller]

595 thumbs up, and 29 people who can't hear the tips because their pedalboard is too noisy.

[lydianlover]

Hello Dr., how come you never talked about ground lift I want to normalize it in my board

[adamssharedsongs]

Hi Mason, After doing my best troubleshooting, I’m stumped, so I’m hitting you up as the god of pedalboards, with hopes that my question and your answer will be useful to me an others! No matter what I do, I get a low but very distracting hum in my system. Touching any metal surface anywhere in the system, including strings, laptop, audio interface, pedals, etc., eliminates it, then it comes back when I release the touch, so I’m assuming it’s a ground loop.

Here’s my setup and things I’ve tried. My setup is an acoustic rig for fiddle (Ithaca Strings/Aceto piezo pickup $500, so high quality) & mandolin (Fishman M300 piezo pickup at around $250). I also tested on a stock PRS SE Custom electric guitar. For testing I’ve stripped down to a very simple path - nothing else is connected to the power supply. The power is a CIOKS4. For the stripped-down test, this powers a Grace Design Bix pedal running into a GFI Specular Tempus, both in mono and both set at 9v, then going out to inputs (I’ve tried all: in-1, in-2, & HiZ) on a Universal Audio Solo/Arrow, running into a 2020 Macbook Pro laptop (via TB3, with Manley Voxbox plugin pre inserted into the unison slot (no other plugs are inserted), monitoring via AKG K240 headphones from the UA Solo. DAW is Ableton Live 10.

Things I’ve tried, with no difference to this consistent hum:
* I’ve tried 3 different 1/4” cables input and output cables of of at least decent quality levels, no longer than 15’, rotated through the system. Pedalboard patch cables are Ernie Ball P06220 Flat Ribbon right angle cables.
* I’ve tried plugging the entire board into a different outlet on another breaker in the house.
* I’ve tried isolating the entire pedalboard by powering it with a USB power cell.
* I’ve tried inserting a cardboard ring between the instrument input and the 1/4” cable.
* I’ve isolated each pedal to a single power outlet cable - no daisy chains, and I’ve removed all the remaining power outputs; only two items are plugged into the CIOKS power supply, & each is fully isolated.
* I’ve tried lifting the Bix preamp pedal and moving it around to see if that changed the intensity of the hum, but it made no change.
* I’ve tried removing the Voxbox pre. The hum got louder.
* I’ve tried eliminating the pedalboard entirely by plugging each instrument directly into the UA Solo’s hi-Z input. This reduced the hum, but did not eliminate it. The hum had the same character. It was still too distracting for serious recording work.
* I’ve tried the system with more pedals, daisy chains, etc., but the 60hz hum was present throughout, so I stripped it down to try to isolate.
* I don't normally have 60hz hum coming through the UA Solo in other uses, so this only relates to the path I've described above.


I’m stumped. Any ideas?

[yohanonshine]

Messing around playin backing tracks thru a blue tooth speaker put it on my pickups to play thru looper . I actually got morse code coming out my amp lol

[livcrash]

Hi Mason thank you for your videos, they made me improve my pedalboard knowledge. I have just one question that can help me a lot. In order to have an On Off switch for my pedalboard instead of plug power cable directly into the wall i putted a multi-socket down in my pedalboard. I have my cioks plugged into it so when i connect my pedalboard to power i can use my swich to turn on power in my pedalboard. The question is: does the multi-socket generate EMF? If yes how can i put an on off switch down in my pedalboard? I'd like to put a switch because i think it's safer for my pedals, i'm open to change my mind :)

[mikebarr]

Love it. Where is Mr. Bowcott? Killer staff!

[ArmyGideonTV]

Is the Cioks DC8 still switch mode and just as good?

[dethfromafluff]

So would a power supply with a rechargeable integrated battery (specifically the Joyo rechargeable power supply), as opposed to the 9 volt battery, give the same results?

[tszegvary]

What about patch cable plugs/covers touching each other or an adjacent pedal? Can that cause noise or does that not matter that much?