LOUD buzzing when I turn on my Overdrives

[JuneauMike]

EB MVP is the active VP I use - it will take a battery, if you want to isolate it. Just don't use the boost feature if hiss is a problem. Before the MVP I was using an old full size passive EB volume pedal, but I put a 1meg pot in it, it really helped.

What does the 1M pot do?

 

[Lazloryder]

1. Dimmable lights on same electric panel. Doesn’t matter if in The same room. Always makes guitar rigs buzz.

2. Plug guitar amp and effects into same wall outlet.

3. Sometimes guitar effects and components don’t like to run on the same power supply. Particularly wireless receivers and vocal effects. I’ve had to use dedicated power to certain parts of my board to make hum go away.

4. If all else fails, plug direct to mixer/PA, and ditch the amp.

 

[Wooly Fox]

Ground loop from a non isolated power supply, buzz being amplifier by gain in OD. Use a isolated power supply (MXR, Voodoo Labs, Gigrig, Strymon etc all make decent isolated supplies) and see if the noise goes away or is minimised. If going DI, use a DI with a ground lift, this should quieten the output.

Also check your patch cable continuity. If one of the patch cables is going bad, you get some funky sounds coming out of the board.

Lastly check your audio and power cables are not bundled together (i.e. running parallel) as the power cables can cause interference with audio cables (more so with AC power, not so much DC). Run them so they are perpendicular (cross over at 90 degrees) to minimise interference.

 

[Lazloryder]

I followed the advice of @Peegoo and went pedal by pedal. And @schmee is the winner! It was the volume pedal causing the noise issue. Glad it’s been solved, now I just need to find a volume pedal that doesn’t suck all the tone from my rig. Any suggestions?

Volume knob on your guitar.

 

[tbalon]

I need some help from the collected knowledge here on TDPRI.

I’ve started playing at my church, and the first practice there was a noticable buzz coming from my rig; Tele or Les Paul, buffered Volume, overdrives (3-4), trem, verb, delay into a ‘75 SFPR. Pedals are powered through a Strymon Zuma, power cables are strymon. I even bought mogami 2319 and squareplug jacks, but making my own cables didn’t fix the noise issue (I solder PCBs and build pedals, and I checked every cable with my multimeter so I wouldn’t think the cabling is the issue).

The buzzing got SIGNIFICANTLY louder when I hit any of my drive pedals. My Rat was unusable, and the buzz was loud enough that it was heard over everything, even with my Les Paul. The weirdest part was if I turn my amp’s reverb up past 4 buzzing starts coming from the amp that is unbearable. I’m sure the church has crummy power (old building), but I’ve never run into this problem before. I hear the buzzing when I play at home as well, though not as prominent as when I’m at church. The buzzing started fairly recently. Not sure where to even start looking.

So, for those of you understand these sorts of things, any ideas where I should start my search for the cause of the noise? View attachment 1121959

Is the buzz / hum 60 Hz? If so, it's likely coming from the A/C source.

Single coils can pick up a lot of noise from different type lighting (florescent are bad for me)

 

[Bearston]

As stated by others here earlier, both ground loops and lighting can be a source of hair-raising noise. I will use a 1:1 electrical transformer when I have one kicking around to eliminate that buzz. I have a variac that also does this and it has the added advantage of a consistent voltage supply and single point electrical source. Especially helpful with my old tube amps that like to see 110v to 115v (my home voltage floats anywhere from 120v to as high as 150v according to my meter).
Main electric panels have 2 phases of electricity, 120v each and combined providing 240v. The thing I also found in my studio setup was that if my amp was plugged into one phase of the electric wall plug and my fx into the opposite electrical phase (or DI or console for ex.), I would get hum + noise that was uncontrollable. Running all connected devices off the same electrical phase eliminated the problem instantly. Star Grounding also helps to balance equipment ground to minimize ground loops, RF, etc.

 

[cyclopean]

That’s just the Holy Spirit.

 

[padreraven]

Check the ground wire on the outlets too

 

[Tubeboy]

Do you power any of the pedals with a splitter cable [ a 1 to 2 ] from the Zuma?
I was having a noise problem not a buzz but a low rumbling. Tracked it back to my Ernie Ball volume pedal with a tuner which I see you have. It didn't like using a splitter cable once I put it on it's own plug the noise went away. Probably not your problem by the sound of it but you never can tell. This may just be useless information.

 

[JuneauMike]

He found the noise source.

 

[Lowspeid]

Do you power any of the pedals with a splitter cable [ a 1 to 2 ] from the Zuma?
I was having a noise problem not a buzz but a low rumbling. Tracked it back to my Ernie Ball volume pedal with a tuner which I see you have. It didn't like using a splitter cable once I put it on it's own plug the noise went away. Probably not your problem by the sound of it but you never can tell. This may just be useless information.

I was using a splitter for 2 of my overdrives, and had noise issues there too. My EB Volume/Tuner pedal was running off it’s own dedicated tap on the Zuma. As soon as I pulled the volume/tuner from the chain the buzz stopped. I think there is something that the active component in the pedal, possibly the touch screen power grid, that causes problems. Oh well. I was using it as a volume pedal only because the tuner function is… terrible.

 

[Refugee]

Dude, you're playing in a church. I think God is trying to tell you something. Your playing hurts his ears, so he's returning the favor.

J/K!!!

If it's a really old church, it probably has crummy old wiring.

 

[wavytech]

Had the same problem last week with my 2003 Dunlop WAH on my pedalboard. Took it apart and cleaned the signal jacks with DeOxit and now good as new. The orignal WAH used Switchcraft TRS jacks but switched to Marshal style jacks after a couple of years. One more thing to worry about.

 

[willsonline]

I followed the advice of @Peegoo and went pedal by pedal. And @schmee is the winner! It was the volume pedal causing the noise issue. Glad it’s been solved, now I just need to find a volume pedal that doesn’t suck all the tone from my rig. Any suggestions?

I’ve been using a Mission Engineering VM-Pro buffered volume pedal for years. Very satisfied with the results.

 

[GPoint]

I followed the advice of @Peegoo and went pedal by pedal. And @schmee is the winner! It was the volume pedal causing the noise issue. Glad it’s been solved, now I just need to find a volume pedal that doesn’t suck all the tone from my rig. Any suggestions?

Maybe the pedal's body is not grounded at all? Check it.
If it's a passive volume pedal:
- Maybe you used the wrong input and output jacks? Try the other way. In such a case the passive internal potentiometer is connected incorrectly and can provide strong noise interference. Maybe the pedal is even miswired internally from the factory...
If it is an active/buffered/powered Volume pedal:
- Check the powering wiring for the ground loops. Use an isolated power supply or a separate power adapter.

 

[Bennycaster]

Glad you fixed your problem.

I played in a gospel soul band in church for a while and I was thinking of their faces if I ever showed up with a Ratt pedal to church. It was a lot easier to check signal chains with just a 345 to princeton.

 

[58Bassman]

One of the commonest issues I've found with any amplification is the buzzing created by LED lighting. I can't switch on my overhead LED lighting in my home studio as the buzzing is so intrusive that I can't do any recording with it on. This only came to light after I replaced the normal overhead tungsten lighting by LED units. As a result I have to use lighting supplied by the normal 13 amp outlets. With the overhead lights switched off the interference is virtually non-existent so eliminate overhead lighting as a possible source of your buzzing.
Have you had similar issues with your gear at home?
If there are no interference issues either at home or with other sources of interference in the church, then with such a variety of pedals I'd start by disconnecting all of them and then start adding one into the circuit at a time until a possible culprit is found.

Look for the part number of your dimmers or switches and go online, so you can find out if they actually work with LED lights. The fact that the LEDs illuminate doesn't mean they're compatible, especially if you have dimmers.

 

[Lowspeid]

Glad you fixed your problem.

I played in a gospel soul band in church for a while and I was thinking of their faces if I ever showed up with a Ratt pedal to church. It was a lot easier to check signal chains with just a 345 to princeton.

My Tele or LP straight into my PR sounds pretty awesome! But at church I need a couple overdrives, an “ambient” reverb, delay and volume pedal (for swells) at the minimum. I could take the 808 or Clone and the Rat off the board and be fine, but the 808 and Clone sound SO good when stacked. And the Rat… it’s a Rat!

But I agree, less is more. I have a couple friends who have pretty large boards because they are playing at churches that “play it like the album” so they have to have a lot of options. My church, we play it as best we can without being a distraction.

 

[Lowspeid]

Edit: duplicate.

 

[pfaust]

I followed the advice of @Peegoo and went pedal by pedal. And @schmee is the winner! It was the volume pedal causing the noise issue. Glad it’s been solved, now I just need to find a volume pedal that doesn’t suck all the tone from my rig. Any suggestions?

You can try a Morley Little Alligator