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Noisy pedal

bmc

Nov 15, 2003
5,194
1,076
Switzerland
Need some help here.

I recently picked up a Boss AW-3 Autowah pedal as a cost effective alternative to an envelope filter. The pedals in the chain are as follows:

EBS Octabass
Boss Chorus
Sadowsky Outboard preamp (I place the Sadowsky at the end to boost the the signal before hitting the amp.)

The problem I have is adding the Autowah pedal. It creates a lot of line noise, whether on or off. I can only remove the line noise by switching off the Sadowsky. My Sadowsky is the most important pedal in my chain.

I have tried placing the new pedal at the front of the chain, at the back of the chain and from the effects/send jacks at the back of my head. Nothing kills the noise.

One downside to the whole issue is I bought the pedal in London over the holidays and now I'm home in Geneva. Now exactly convenient for returning the product.

I want to use the pedal for some Stevie Wonder tunes we do but not at the price of carrying noice all night.

Any ideas on how to fix this would be much appreciated. If not, I'll have a spankin new pedal sitting in a box looking for a new home.
 
The effect runs dead quiet until I turn the preamp on. I can run the chain with the preamp in bypass mode and it is dead quiet. For some reason, the preamp just amplifies whatever minimal amount of noise exists. I can't figure it out.