PBC randomly cutting out signal for anyone?

Brian Watson

Brian Watson

New Member
Hi guys, first post and I'm a new user on the PBC. Love it so far, learning as I go.

I'm tech for a band using the PBC on guitarist's main pedal board, and recently we've been running into an issue where the PBC will randomly "lose" the output signal when switching presets. It's been a bit of a nightmare to troubleshoot, but today I've had the chance to test cables from guitar to board and out to amp, individual pedal switches and cables in/out of loops, and everything is good, nothing seems intermittent.

After playing through the PBC for about an hour, working up and down banks and presets, in both preset and loop modes, I was able to twice re create this problem where the output signal disappears when selecting a new preset. I could not isolate the problem to one particular bank/song, preset, loop, or switch on the PBC. Hitting tuner mute/unmute a couple times or power cycling the PBC seems to be the fix.

Has anyone else run into this, been able to recreate or trace the problem, or found a fix? It's just started happening during the past week, 2 shows in a row, and otherwise has been flawless. I suspected everything else in the pedal chain, cables, etc. first. This unit has been in use for a bit over a year and has been all over the US and Europe for about 100 shows, but it's in good shape and hasn't taken any obvious hits or dings. We are running a slightly older version of the firmware and editor bc the guitarist has an older Mac, at least that's the reason I was given.

Thanks for any help or pointers,

Brian
 
The only issue I know happens when you press mute, then press a preset button without turning off mute. This is fixed in later releases as long as the mute button is set up correctly (Send on Preset Change, Update on Preset Change both turned on).

If this isn't problem you're seeing, please let me know if you can find any pattern. Does it only trigger when you press a preset button, for example?
 
Thanks for the reply. I'll keep looking for repeatability, so far it seems utterly random and not related to a bad switch, pedal, cable, or jack. Always fine during sound check, randomly happens during the set! I'll go over it more tomorrow.
 
Brian,

I had the same thing happen during a sound check last night. I couldn't replicate the problem, and the only difference between the two presets were some settings on my Strymon BigSky. I switched songs and then went back again and it worked just fine the rest of the night. I played with it a ton yesterday and couldn't get the issue to happen again.

I'm on the 3.0 firmware, feels like it could be some sort of software glitch happening. I'm not super concerned about it, as I was able to quickly get everything working again, it's just odd.
 
If anyone can identify any pattern to the problem or has any way to make this happen reliably, please let me know. I haven't seen it happen yet, but as soon as I can reproduce the problem, I can definitely fix it.
 
tshaw said:
Brian,

I had the same thing happen during a sound check last night. I couldn't replicate the problem, and the only difference between the two presets were some settings on my Strymon BigSky. I switched songs and then went back again and it worked just fine the rest of the night. I played with it a ton yesterday and couldn't get the issue to happen again.

I'm on the 3.0 firmware, feels like it could be some sort of software glitch happening. I'm not super concerned about it, as I was able to quickly get everything working again, it's just odd.
Click to expand...

Thanks, this guitarist has a big sky and time line on the board, I wonder if it's a strymon thing. His big sky is on almost all the time, and I believe all his effects are in series.

The last time it went out, even going to loop mode and turning off all loops didn't bring sound back which I thought was odd. But the problem hasn't recurred over the past few shows, so maybe it was just ghosts.
 
I also use the Big Sky and the Timeline, and they are on in pretty much every patch. I have them both in Parallel tho...

I still have not been able to recreate the issue yet. I'll post again if I am able to.
 
Brian Watson said:
Hi guys, first post and I'm a new user on the PBC. Love it so far, learning as I go.

I'm tech for a band using the PBC on guitarist's main pedal board, and recently we've been running into an issue where the PBC will randomly "lose" the output signal when switching presets. It's been a bit of a nightmare to troubleshoot, but today I've had the chance to test cables from guitar to board and out to amp, individual pedal switches and cables in/out of loops, and everything is good, nothing seems intermittent.

After playing through the PBC for about an hour, working up and down banks and presets, in both preset and loop modes, I was able to twice re create this problem where the output signal disappears when selecting a new preset. I could not isolate the problem to one particular bank/song, preset, loop, or switch on the PBC. Hitting tuner mute/unmute a couple times or power cycling the PBC seems to be the fix.

Has anyone else run into this, been able to recreate or trace the problem, or found a fix? It's just started happening during the past week, 2 shows in a row, and otherwise has been flawless. I suspected everything else in the pedal chain, cables, etc. first. This unit has been in use for a bit over a year and has been all over the US and Europe for about 100 shows, but it's in good shape and hasn't taken any obvious hits or dings. We are running a slightly older version of the firmware and editor bc the guitarist has an older Mac, at least that's the reason I was given.

Thanks for any help or pointers,

Brian
Click to expand...

So I just got my new mastermind through sweetwater last week, like you I have tested all of the cabling and all of my pedals are in perfect working condition. Last night during the first official time running through our bands set a couple of times I notIced sections where my signal started to randomly cut in and out. Later on in the night at the end of a song I completely lost signal for about 4-5 minutes. I jumped into my loops page and disengaged all pedals in the preset, still no sound. So I unplugged the input cable and went straight into my amp to see if it was the badcat and immediately I had sound again. I tried power cycling the RJM, still no sound. Then randomly, not touching any cables I put the guitar down on my stand and I heard feedback coming from the cab, for no reason I can think of I had signal again. No issues for the rest of the night. Just to clarify I'm running the latest firmware. Another weird thing I noticed that my Earthquaker Devices Palisades pedal in loop 2 kept making this weird bit crusher Darty fizzing out kind of sound through a couple of the presets during a a few songs. I'm sweating a little bit here, any idea what has caused these phantom signal losses guys????

Blake
 
It's hard to say, it could be the PBC itself, but it could be a cable as well. I recommend doing some investigation, move cables around and see if you can get the problem to happen again.
 
And, if the cables don't show any issues, try turning off buffers if/when the problem happens again. Also, try turning off the outputs and turning them on again.
 
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