Strange, unwanted tremolo effect

lincolnblue

I wonder if anyone can help. I've noticed recently that even when I have all pedals bypassed, my clean tone has almost a very slight tremolo effect to it. This is regarslregof what amp I use. Any ideas what it could be? 

Keefy

Is there any way you can audio or video record this? Also what is in your pedal chain, and which are buffered and which true bypass?

bbill335

lincolnblue said:

I wonder if anyone can help. I've noticed recently that even when I have all pedals bypassed, my clean tone has almost a very slight tremolo effect to it. This is regarslregof what amp I use. Any ideas what it could be? 

is one of your pedals the catalinbread valcoder (or similar tremolo pedal)? they ship them in non-true bypass mode and you can sometimes hear a *touch* of tremolo when the effect is off. If you open them up and either tweak the trimpot or just flip the switch to proper bypass, you should be fine.

Teetonetal

If you have a tremolo in your chain, remove it. I can't remember what pedal it was  but ages ago I had a tremolo where the effect "leaked" even when bypassed. Very annoying. 

If it's not the tremolo, remove each pedal one st a time till it goes.

If it still doesn't go then maybe it's something else in the house or outdide causing interference. One time someone on here was picking up a pulse from a nearby electric fence iirc.

lincolnblue

This is my board. My tremolo is the Boo Instruments tremolo. 

roberty

Is it Boo bypass?

Teetonetal

Remove the Boo. See if noise goes. Report back.

bbill335

What's your power supply? You might be getting clock noise bleeding through from some of those digital pedals 

lincolnblue

bbill335 said:

What's your power supply? You might be getting clock noise bleeding through from some of those digital pedals 

It's the Vitoos DC8

Keefy

lincolnblue said:

bbill335 said:

What's your power supply? You might be getting clock noise bleeding through from some of those digital pedals 

It's the Vitoos DC8

Hmmm. Although the Vitoos DC8 claims to be 'isolated', on the unit itself the six 9v 300mA outputs are marked ISOLATED FROM A & B (the variable voltage 1000mA outputs) - i.e. not from each other.

ICBM

Is the slight 'tremolo' affected by the speed setting on the tremolo pedal? If not, it's not leak-through from the pedal.

If not it could actually be something else interacting via the power supply, if the outputs aren't isolated. (Which I agree it doesn't look like they are.)

lincolnblue

ICBM said:

Is the slight 'tremolo' affected by the speed setting on the tremolo pedal? If not, it's not leak-through from the pedal.

If not it could actually be something else interacting via the power supply, if the outputs aren't isolated. (Which I agree it doesn't look like they are.)

No I don't think it is affected by it. I took out the power from the tremolo last night and it still had the 'effect' coming through. I will try recording it and taking the pedal completely out of the chain and see what happens.

EricTheWeary

Lot of tremolos like to see the guitar or a buffer before them ( even though they are typically toward the end of any  pedal chain). If the Emma is on then it will, as I think I understand it, act as a buffer which might be why you are only getting the noise on clean sounds ( assuming clean means your overdrive is turned off). If it does seem to be the Boo it just might need to be elsewhere in the chain; although I can't really see the cables in your picture so if it's already straight after the ( buffered) Boss that's probably not it.  

lincolnblue

EricTheWeary said:

Lot of tremolos like to see the guitar or a buffer before them ( even though they are typically toward the end of any  pedal chain). If the Emma is on then it will, as I think I understand it, act as a buffer which might be why you are only getting the noise on clean sounds ( assuming clean means your overdrive is turned off). If it does seem to be the Boo it just might need to be elsewhere in the chain; although I can't really see the cables in your picture so if it's already straight after the ( buffered) Boss that's probably not it.  

It does actually do the same when the overdrive is on. I have a buffer at the beginning of the chain (the small silver one top right in the photo) anyway. 

EricTheWeary

lincolnblue said:

EricTheWeary said:

Lot of tremolos like to see the guitar or a buffer before them ( even though they are typically toward the end of any  pedal chain). If the Emma is on then it will, as I think I understand it, act as a buffer which might be why you are only getting the noise on clean sounds ( assuming clean means your overdrive is turned off). If it does seem to be the Boo it just might need to be elsewhere in the chain; although I can't really see the cables in your picture so if it's already straight after the ( buffered) Boss that's probably not it.  

It does actually do the same when the overdrive is on. I have a buffer at the beginning of the chain (the small silver one top right in the photo) anyway. 

Ahh, probably not then. 

Teetonetal

Keefy said:

lincolnblue said:

bbill335 said:

What's your power supply? You might be getting clock noise bleeding through from some of those digital pedals 

It's the Vitoos DC8

Hmmm. Although the Vitoos DC8 claims to be 'isolated', on the unit itself the six 9v 300mA outputs are marked ISOLATED FROM A & B (the variable voltage 1000mA outputs) - i.e. not from each other.

Hmm, if it's not the tremolo, then it could easily be digital noise. Take the nova out of the chain. Put the wet on Power out A, everything else running from the 9V "isolated outs"

It seems like the PSU is split into A & B and Other, each block is isolated, but not the individual outputs within the blocks, this might be an issue.

If it still doesn't work, all you can do is add pedals 1x1 to the chain until the noise appears.

steer

At the risk of stating the obvious - try without any pedals at all. If that cures it then add the pedals back into the chain one by one, and you should find the culprit. 

ICBM

steer said:

At the risk of stating the obvious - try without any pedals at all. If that cures it then add the pedals back into the chain one by one, and you should find the culprit. 

Unless it's caused by clock signals from two of them interacting via the power supply.

In that case you need to add pedals one by one until the noise occurs, then take the others (ie not the one you just added) away one by one until it stops.

Voxman

What guitar do you have - and if more than one, is it the same with each?  Just wondering if it might be a bit of double-toning if the p/ups are too close to the strings?  If not that, have you tried your set-up in a different location to rule out if it's anything to do with your ring mains?

vale

Teetonetal said:

If you have a tremolo in your chain, remove it. I can't remember what pedal it was  but ages ago I had a tremolo where the effect "leaked" even when bypassed. Very annoying. 

If it's not the tremolo, remove each pedal one st a time till it goes.

this. signal bleed-through of any lfo type modulation (not fully true bypassed) will cause this. so remove in series (trem, flanger, chorus) until you find the culprit.

if this throws up the rogue, maybe search online for others who have had a similar problem with that effect. sometimes there will be a little trimpot inside that will allow you to tune ghost lfo whooshing out, which would be a simple and painless diy fix.

if it's a badly designed pedal, or a vintage pedal that was designed before people could be as fussy about true bypass as they are now (EHX modulations sometimes like this), it may be something you will have to swap for something else or live with.

if it is causing probs but you really want to keep it, think about isolating it from your main pedalboard signal chain by putting it in a little a/ switchable loop of its own. so it is only bleeding through when you absolutely need it, and when you don't, it is removed from your main chain altogether.
you can get a tiny box a/b switch v cheap and won't take up much room.

impmann

I’m with ICBM.

Pretty sure what you are describing is clock noise on the power supply. Cheap power supplies that aren’t properly isolated will do this.

Try powering the digital pedals using their original or separate power supplies and powering the rest of the board as normal as an experiment.