PEDAL NOT WORKING OR MAKING NOISE?

We see a lot of complaints about noisy or allegedly broken pedals on the interwebz so I thought I would give some tips to trouble-shoot the problem.

MY PEDAL DOESN’T SOUND RIGHT:
Firstly check the power supply, are you using the recommended supply? You must use negative center power supplies with negative center pedals and positive center power supplies with positive center pedals, using the wrong one can fry your pedal and make it sound real bad or even silent! To find out which your pedal is refer to the manual or contact the manufacturer. If you are using a battery is it over 9 volts? Flat batteries are the cause of a huge % of pedal problems so be aware.

MY PEDAL MAKES NOISE:
Check all your cables, try plugging your guitar into your amp with just one cable, does it sound right? If it does sound good try adding one pedal at a time, does it still sound right? If it does add another and another until it sounds bad, through the process of elimination you can often find the troublesome pedal. Often you can change the order of your pedals to make your setup sound better and remove noise. If it still sounds bad but all your pedals sound good alone then you possibly have a bad cable, try another one and repeat the process until you find the troublesome cable and/or pedal. Also it could be a combination of two pedals creating the noise so switch the order of them to see if the noise persists.

Some modulation effects do have a certain amount of noise that is acceptable to the manufacturer and cant be removed, be sure this is not what you are mistaking for a problem pedal. The types of noise include: Hissing and minor clicking etc.This is perfectly normal and acceptable by most users.

I HAVE A LOUD BUZZ WHEN I TAKE MY FINGERS OFF THE STRINGS:
This complaint is common of a badly grounded guitar or pedal, did you recently re-wire your guitar? If so check your grounds connections for cold solder joints or even loose wires. Also check your cables, sometimes they break (a wire comes loose) and can cause grounding issues.

WHEN I HAVE TWO PEDALS ON IT BUZZES LIKE MAD:
This is often because you are overloading the second pedal with the first, its okay to boost some distortions and fuzz with a light overdrive or a booster but running two fuzzes together often creates a lot of noise, if you must run two pedals together then maybe its time to upgrade to a higher gain distortion or fuzz?!?!?!

WHAT ORDER SHOULD I HAVE MY PEDALS IN:

Generally, most people have octave effects before distortion and fuzz and distortion and fuzz before chorus, phasers, and delays but you don’t need to adhere to this, just experiment and see what sounds best to you as we are all different and like different things, there’s no “right” way!
Have fun experimenting!

MY PEDAL HAS TRIM POTS INSIDE, CAN I ADJUST THESE TO MAKE MY PEDAL BETTER?:

Generally speaking, NO you cant make it any better by adjusting them and in most cases you will actually make it sound worse! The builders set these trim pots to make precise adjustments to transistors and OPAMPS, they adjust the voltage and or bias of certain effects. SO unless your manual says you can adjust the trim pot just don’t do it as you will need an expensive oscilloscope and a lot of knowledge to reset them correctly. If you do adjust them it will likely result in you having to send your pedal back to the manufacturer for resetting, this will cost you money for the repair and for shipping both ways as you wrecked it so you pay for it.

User friendly trim pots are always noted in the product manual and the trims are usually marked by the builder for the optimum sound, you can safely adjust these with no risk of ruining your pedal.

If you still have problems with your pedal after all this troubleshooting it may be a good time to contact the manufacturer for repair.

I WANT TO LEARN MORE ABOUT EFFECTS:
If you’re like me and are an effects fanatic you will probably want to know about the internal workings of effects and build them yourself, so here’s a few links to good websites with lots of info to get you started:

DIYSTOMPBOXES
FREESTOMPBOXES
AMZ
GGG
BEAVIS AUDIO
AMPAGE

Have fun!