Home › Forums › Help/Technical Questions › Soul Preacher Nano, issue with power splitter.

Viewing 8 posts - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)
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  • October 28, 2012 at 8:34 pm #82647
    mrelwood
    Member

    I bought the pedal recently, but I’m having an issue when powering the pedal from a splitter cable that splits the power from one power adapter to multiple pedals. Whenever I connect the power to another pedal that connects the power minus to ground, the signal output of the Soul Preacher Nano increases significantly. I think the compressor also squishes more that way.

    I really don’t like using batteries as an option. And another power adapter takes space and seems redundant.

    I suppose the power supply in the Soul Preacher Nano floats the power minus and bias the board between -4.5V and +4.5V. Therefore connecting the minus to the ground rises the operating voltage. But I couldn’t find the schematic to confirm.

    Is this a known issue, or is my pedal faulty? Can anything be done about this?

    October 29, 2012 at 2:01 pm #118330
    Cryabetes
    Participant

    haven’t heard of this being an issue before. what other pedals are you running?

    October 29, 2012 at 4:47 pm #118332
    mrelwood
    Member
    Quote:
    haven’t heard of this being an issue before. what other pedals are you running?

    Seems to be an issue with any pedal I have. For example Korg PitchBlack. I noticed that just connecting the power minus to signal ground on any of the splitter cable causes the issue, no other pedal needed.

    Almost all pedals connect the power minus to ground, so if this really hasn’t been an issue for anyone else, my pedal is broken. I really wish there was a schematic I could have a look at. That way I could determine what’s going on.

    October 29, 2012 at 4:52 pm #118333
    Cryabetes
    Participant

    Would you mind posting your setup? Just like
    guitar > (pitchblack) > (whatever else) > (model of amp) or whatever? Also what brand of adapter are you using? It may be an issue with your amp, it could be one of the pedals you’re using has something feeding into the grounds, it could be loose winding on your pickups, or, yeah, it could be a faulty soul preacher. But I’d be hesitant to dismiss a pedal when it could be something else entirely.

    October 29, 2012 at 6:08 pm #118334
    mrelwood
    Member
    Quote:
    It may be an issue with your amp, it could be one of the pedals you’re using has something feeding into the grounds, it could be loose winding on your pickups
    …
    But I’d be hesitant to dismiss a pedal when it could be something else entirely.

    Sorry, I don’t mean to be dismissive, but no it couldn’t.

    The issue appears when using any of my instruments, all of which have had their electronics rebuilt by a professional guitar tech, and which all work flawlessly on all systems I use them on. The change of volume is also clearly apparent when there is no instrument connected to the Soul Preacher input, only a cable with the other end free.
    ->
    Sould Preacher Nano powered by 1Spot (tried two of them) and a splitter cable. The splitter cable is working flawlessly with all other pedals, and using a multimeter to measure the connectivity, the connections appear as expected.
    ->
    Soundcraft mixing desk instrument input, MOTU Traveler MKIII instrument input, or another FX pedal.

    The voltage output of the 1Spot dropped only by 0.01V when adding the other device to the splitter cable, so the performance of the power supply is not an issue. The issue can also be launched by just temporarely connecting one of the splitter cable’s DC plug’s center (power minus) to the Soul Preacher casing. Or doing that internally in the Soul Preacher.

    So yes, it is the power supply section of the Soul Preacher that is the issue here. It doesn’t expect the power minus to be connected to signal ground, which is usual practice when building pedals. Soul Preacher Vintage does it, if the schematics I saw are correct.

    October 29, 2012 at 6:28 pm #118335
    Cryabetes
    Participant

    Quite. Then yes, that would be either a defective model (is yours still under warranty, or, failing that, returnable to the point of purchase?) or an outand-out design flaw. I suppose it would be impractical to run a DI between the soul preacher and whatever is next in the pedal chain (or, largely futile if the daisy chain power is on both sides of the compressor.) Have you looked into other compressors at all? Any particular aspects you’re after, aside from the ability to daisy-chain sans hum?

    (I didn’t mean to come off as particularly antagonistic in this exchange, incidentally; we get people of all music- & electrical-knowledge levels here and it’s difficult to discern where they are on the spectrum of experience with effects.)

    October 30, 2012 at 10:14 am #118341
    mrelwood
    Member

    I bought the pedal used, and since it seemed to work perfectly alone, I said okay and closed the deal. This is the pedal I now have, and I do like the sound and the attack on a bass, so I don’t think there is a reason to go hunting for another compressor. I have built a few pedals of my own, so I’m not at all against fixing what is broken.

    I would like to hear from EH staff wether this is an expected behavior or not.

    If some of you have the Soul Preacher Nano and a splitter power cable, I would appreciate if you could do this quick test:
    – Play with only the Soul Preacher connected to the splitter power cable and make note of the audible volume level.
    – Insert a nail or anything metal in another DC jack of the splitter cable, and touch the cover of the Soul Preacher with the nail.
    – Check wether the output volume of the Soul Preacher gets higher or not.

    October 2, 2013 at 10:33 am #119372
    FrauBlucher
    Member

    I’m sorry for resuscitating a dead thread but this one saved my (pedal-)life pointing me in the right direction on some annoying power issues I was experiencing

    Quote:
    I would like to hear from EH staff wether this is an expected behavior or not.

    If some of you have the Soul Preacher Nano and a splitter power cable, I would appreciate if you could do this quick test:
    – Play with only the Soul Preacher connected to the splitter power cable and make note of the audible volume level.
    – Insert a nail or anything metal in another DC jack of the splitter cable, and touch the cover of the Soul Preacher with the nail.
    – Check wether the output volume of the Soul Preacher gets higher or not.

    Short answer: I’m no EH staff but yes, I think is an expected behaviour.

    I checked almost all my pedal with a tester and a great deal of patience, turns out that in some pedals (all the ehx I own – Soul Preacher Nano, Memory Toy, Memory Boy) the power minus is NOT connected to ground.
    Daisy-chaining that pedals to others with power minus grounded results in assorted issues depending on pedals (I noticed the same volume boost on the Soul Preacher and some changes in quality and number of repetitions of the memory *oy) and I’m suspecting it’s affecting somehow the tension on the sanyo power juice I’m using to power all the pedalboard.

    That said, I like EH effects a lot, so using a separate power supply is not tragic, still it would have been kind to mention that kind of things in the manual. AND I’m still thinking of it as a bug until someone explains me why it’s a feature.

    Thanks again Mrelwood / Cryabetes for the heads up

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