Hello,

It’s been a while since I’ve posted here! Like a decade. Geez.

Anyhow, back in 2014 I purchased an EHXtortion and absolutely love it. However, I didn’t really use my pedalboard for the summer of 2017 and in late 2017 I plugged it in and couldn’t get it to make any noise — the EHXtortion passed signal in bypass mode (so long as it was powered, due to the buffer) but as soon as you activated the pedal, it would just spit out white noise. In Boost mode, with Gain and Volume dimed, it will put out quick bursts of gated, spitty distortion when you hammer a chord, not unlike a fuzz pedal running on minimum voltage. The issue was identical on both the XLR direct out and the 1/4″ amp out.

I put it under my bed and told myself I’d deal with it later. Then yesterday, I pulled it out to see if I could figure out what was wrong. I plugged it back into my pedalboard with the same PedalPower 2+, and it still had the excessive white noise but everything else worked basically as I expected it to! I practiced for about 45 minutes then unplugged my board.

This morning I plugged my pedalboard in, and the EHXtortion is dead again. The pedal was locked on my board plugged into a PP2+ from mid-2014 to late 2017 with no issues, then sat in a dry box under my bed for most of 2018. It’s never been dropped or splashed or plugged into an inappropriate power supply. There was no physical shock whatsoever between when it started working yesterday and stopped working today — all I did was unplug my pedalboard. The problem persists on every pre-gain setting, on both outputs, and with multiple guitars and cables, regardless whether it’s powered by the PP2+, a dedicated 9v adapter, or a fresh battery.

I know it’s a long shot and I don’t expect anyone to magically diagnose the issue, but with the warranty long-expired and the Canadian dollar being what it is these days, paying for a repair is low on my list of priorities. So my first question is, is this a known issue? Secondly, even if this is a fluke, are there some “likely culprits” I could check on my own? I’m not knowledgeable enough to trace the circuit myself but I have a soldering iron/multimeter and can follow directions.

I’ve attached a soundbite of the pedal running at max gain. There’s no amp sim and the bitrate is crazy low to meet upload requirements, but it demonstrates the gating effect. No signal passes at all on the regular channel. EDIT: “File Not Allowed.”

Thanks for the response, even if it’s just “We can’t diagnose the issue over the internet.” And as always, thank you for making such incredible pedals! I’ve owned literally dozens of EHX boxes over the years and this is the first one to inexplicably die on me…