revivethevivid
Member
Hey Ron,
So just had a custom pedalboard build with a PBC10, with loops 7-10 running in parallel to my Diezel VH4S amp’s Parallel FX loop and am experiencing some tone suck that my previous set up did not have. I’ve narrowed the tone suck to being something in the parallel FX loop, and not anything before the amps input. So either at the PBC10’s internal line mixer, or the custom passive pass thru box on my board my tech here made for me. Wanted to pick your brain on some possible causes/solutions as it’s a bit outside me and my techs experience level.
Worth noting, the first issue we ran into was lots of ground loop noise in the FX loop send/returns that my previous setup didn’t have at all. My previous setup used a passive analog signal splitter to split send from amp into my separate reverb/delay pedals, then the outs of each pedal went into a $100 6 channel Yamaha submixer. And then the left/right out of the Submixer went back into the amp. This set up, though a bit clunky, sounded phenomenal, with NO ground loop issues. So was a bit surprised when my thousand dollar PBC10 suddenly was having huge ground loop noise issues. After doing some research on these forums, my tech added some ground lift switches at every send/return to the amp in the custom pass thru box on my new pedal board as a fix. The best results being, ground not lifted for Amp input, and ground lifts lifted for the amp send, and the left/right efx returns.
This eliminated most of the ground loop noise, however it’s still noisier than my previous set up . Also getting a subtle ground loop noise that only happens as you sweep the volume pedal(plugged into insert 1 on pbc.) This sweeping ground noise is mostly noticeable on high gain channels, we tried different volume pedals and also experimented with removing the ground on a custom patch cable from volume pedal to PBC, with no change in result, so that’s a bit confusing as to what's causing that noise.
The other more frustrating issue in comparison to my previous setup is there’s subtle but noticeable tone suck, (slight volume drop, and the dimension of the tone is slightly smaller and not as wide, delay trails don’t feel as separated, rich, and clean, also sounds like there's some digital clipping happening somehow from the parallel fx, mostly noticeable from the delay/timeline.)
If I bypass the Custom Pass thru box and PBC10 parallel loops, and plug my amps parallel FX send directly into timeline, and then timeline back into amp FX returns, issue goes away, and tone is huuuge again. So it’s either something to do with the line mixer on the PBC10, or the custom passive pass thru box. Though everything on the Custom Passive pass thru box looks like its correct. Do you know if having to run multiple ground lifts would cause this tone suck? Would high headroom buffers at the FX send returns from pedal board be a fix for that? Or is it something inherent or defective on my PBC10? Any other ideas what would cause tone suck?
For cabling we're using Evidence Monorail with SPS7 TRS connectors. Now they are sharing a ground naturally, could that be a cause of some of the tone suck?
Rig:
Guitar
-> buffer
RJM PBC10
L1 - Cali76 compressor
L2 - PitchFork
L3 - Mobius(mono)
L4 - empty
Out 1-4 - Volume Pedal Send(Ernie Ball 6165)
IN 5-6 - Volume pedal Return(Getting ground loop hum)
L5 - empty
L6 - empty
OUT 5-6 Diezel VH4S Amp Input
In 7-10 - Diezel VH4S Amp FX Send to PBC
L7 - empty
L8 - Timeline (parallel)
L9 - Bigsky (parallel)
L10 - Mercury 7 (parallel)
OUT A/B - Diezel VH4S Stereo Parallel FX Return (Getting ground loop hum)
Thanks Ron!
So just had a custom pedalboard build with a PBC10, with loops 7-10 running in parallel to my Diezel VH4S amp’s Parallel FX loop and am experiencing some tone suck that my previous set up did not have. I’ve narrowed the tone suck to being something in the parallel FX loop, and not anything before the amps input. So either at the PBC10’s internal line mixer, or the custom passive pass thru box on my board my tech here made for me. Wanted to pick your brain on some possible causes/solutions as it’s a bit outside me and my techs experience level.
Worth noting, the first issue we ran into was lots of ground loop noise in the FX loop send/returns that my previous setup didn’t have at all. My previous setup used a passive analog signal splitter to split send from amp into my separate reverb/delay pedals, then the outs of each pedal went into a $100 6 channel Yamaha submixer. And then the left/right out of the Submixer went back into the amp. This set up, though a bit clunky, sounded phenomenal, with NO ground loop issues. So was a bit surprised when my thousand dollar PBC10 suddenly was having huge ground loop noise issues. After doing some research on these forums, my tech added some ground lift switches at every send/return to the amp in the custom pass thru box on my new pedal board as a fix. The best results being, ground not lifted for Amp input, and ground lifts lifted for the amp send, and the left/right efx returns.
This eliminated most of the ground loop noise, however it’s still noisier than my previous set up . Also getting a subtle ground loop noise that only happens as you sweep the volume pedal(plugged into insert 1 on pbc.) This sweeping ground noise is mostly noticeable on high gain channels, we tried different volume pedals and also experimented with removing the ground on a custom patch cable from volume pedal to PBC, with no change in result, so that’s a bit confusing as to what's causing that noise.
The other more frustrating issue in comparison to my previous setup is there’s subtle but noticeable tone suck, (slight volume drop, and the dimension of the tone is slightly smaller and not as wide, delay trails don’t feel as separated, rich, and clean, also sounds like there's some digital clipping happening somehow from the parallel fx, mostly noticeable from the delay/timeline.)
If I bypass the Custom Pass thru box and PBC10 parallel loops, and plug my amps parallel FX send directly into timeline, and then timeline back into amp FX returns, issue goes away, and tone is huuuge again. So it’s either something to do with the line mixer on the PBC10, or the custom passive pass thru box. Though everything on the Custom Passive pass thru box looks like its correct. Do you know if having to run multiple ground lifts would cause this tone suck? Would high headroom buffers at the FX send returns from pedal board be a fix for that? Or is it something inherent or defective on my PBC10? Any other ideas what would cause tone suck?
For cabling we're using Evidence Monorail with SPS7 TRS connectors. Now they are sharing a ground naturally, could that be a cause of some of the tone suck?
Rig:
Guitar
-> buffer
RJM PBC10
L1 - Cali76 compressor
L2 - PitchFork
L3 - Mobius(mono)
L4 - empty
Out 1-4 - Volume Pedal Send(Ernie Ball 6165)
IN 5-6 - Volume pedal Return(Getting ground loop hum)
L5 - empty
L6 - empty
OUT 5-6 Diezel VH4S Amp Input
In 7-10 - Diezel VH4S Amp FX Send to PBC
L7 - empty
L8 - Timeline (parallel)
L9 - Bigsky (parallel)
L10 - Mercury 7 (parallel)
OUT A/B - Diezel VH4S Stereo Parallel FX Return (Getting ground loop hum)
Thanks Ron!