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 true-
bypass, 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 avail-
able 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.
Quality cables are also important. “You’d be
shocked at the difference in sound quality if you sat
down and A/B’d different cables,” says guitar-tech
Scott Appleton. “If you use great cables, noise really
shouldn’t be an issue—provided you have everything
