The Voodoo Lab ISO-5
(reviewed November 2010)
features isolated DC outputs for
9-, 12-, and 18-volt devices. |
The Visual Sound 1 SPOT
(top) can power up to eight
pedals from one outlet, and it
includes an eight-plug cable
(left), two battery-clip converters
(middle), an L6 converter for Line
6 modeling pedals (third from
right), and two 1/8" converter
plugs (far right). |
Pedal Power
With all due respect to Eric Johnson and his
views on the tonal differences among battery
types, running all your pedals on
any kind
of battery will cost a fortune over time. Plus,
changing batteries in a pedal that’s attached
to a pedalboard can be a real pain—especially
if the compartment is on the bottom of the
unit. Some pedalboards come with built-in
power supplies that can adequately power
most conventional pedals. However, not all
pedals use DC power, and not all pedalboards
come equipped with a power supply. In these
cases, an isolated power supply is the solution.
Worthy units include the Voodoo Lab Pedal
Power ISO-5 (Street $109,
voodoolab.com)—
which includes four 9-volt, one 12-volt, and
one 18-volt outputs—and the Visual Sound 1
SPOT (Street $19.95,
visualsound.net), which
can power up to twenty 9-volt pedals using an
optional daisy-chain cable.
“It’s okay to share a few analog pedals with
one of the outputs from a good power supply,”
says AnalogMike, “so you don’t really need one
output for each pedal. But a digital pedal—such
as a tuner or digital delay—should not share
power with any other pedals.”
Noise and Signal Degradation
Most guitarists would probably not be surprised
to hear that, the more pedals you add to your
pedalboard, the greater the chances of problems.
Even if you have relatively noise-free pedals, the
extraneous noise from a bunch of them is going
to add up. Sometimes it only takes one very
cool—but very unruly—pedal to throw your
signal chain into turmoil. And tone-robbing pedals
can wreak havoc on your sound even when
they’re turned off.
One solution you hear bandied about a lot
is to use true-bypass pedals. When turned off,
a true-bypass pedal sends the signal straight
from the input jack to the output jack without
any connection to the pedal’s circuitry, thus
bypassing any tone-damaging properties of
the pedal. Pedals that don’t use true-bypass
circuitry send your signal through a buffered
section of the circuit even when the pedal is
off—it just doesn’t go through the effect section
of the circuit.
But Radial Engineering’s Peter Janis says it’s
not as simple as always selecting true-bypass
pedals. “There are pluses and minuses to truebypass,
just as there are with buffered signals.
The problem with true-bypass setups is that
they tend to pop’ hen the pedal is activated, and
if many pedals are being used, noise can often
creep into the system. Buffers are often used as
a means to circumvent the problem altogether,
but this too has a cost. A Stratocaster connected
directly to a Marshall will sound different when
the signal is buffered.”
AnalogMike says, “I prefer true-bypass pedals
whenever possible, but if you go through
several true-bypass pedals and they’re all off,
you may lose some high end due to all the
cabling. However, if you keep one pedal on, like
a delay, that should provide enough buffering.
A buffered-bypass pedal that is off will often be
a good enough buffer. If you often run all your
pedals off, a buffer on your pedalboard would
be a good idea.”
If the sounds you seek aren’t always available
in true-bypass designs, there are still steps
you can take to combat noise and improve
sound quality. “First, test with batteries to see
if the noise is from the power supply,” says
AnalogMike, “and also disconnect all other
pedals when testing one pedal for noise. To test
for noise, you have to set the pedal so that it’s
at the same volume when it’s on as it is when
it’s off—that is, at unity gain. When you turn
it up higher, it will amplify any noise that is
already there, making it more apparent. If you
turn the guitar all the way down, you can hear
what’s coming from the pedal. A little bit of
white noise is normal when it’s set at unity
gain. There are a million things that can cause
noise, so plug in, open up the pedal, and probe
around with a chopstick or something and see
if you can locate the cause—like a bad solder
joint, a failing switch contact, a jack, a pot, etc.”
If you have any pedals that just can’t be
tamed, another solution is to incorporate a loop
controller like the Radial BigShot EFX True-
Bypass Effects Loop Switcher (Street $79.95,
radialeng.com) or the buffered Radial Loopbone
Dual Effects Loop (Street $259.99), or the
Cusack Pedal Board Tamer (Street $500,
cusackeffects.com) to keep them out of the circuit
until needed.
-
The Radial Engineering BigShot EFX True-Bypass Effects Loop Switcher features two
footswitchable effects loops, allowing you to remove signal-degrading stompboxes from the path
and create a true-bypass signal chain.
-
The Radial Engineering Loopbone features class-A circuitry, two footswitchable effects loops,
a footswitchable VariBoost function, a pickup-load-correction circuit, Slingshot amp-switching
capabilities, and a tuner out.
-
The Cusack Pedal Board Tamer (reviewed November 2010) offers nine effects loops—three of
which may be operated in stereo—and has two guitar inputs that can be switched between truebypass
and buffered, a mutable tuner output, three tap-tempo outputs, a Mech Mode mechanical
looping mode, a Preset Mode with nine programmable presets, and an All Off switch.