Weird whine - conflicting pedals/currents?

[dlenaghan]

So my Line 6 style adapter for my OneSpot came in in order to power my EHX Hog along with my moogerfooger - they are both included in the total mA allowed by the OneSpot.

Turn it on, there's this high pitch whine, whether or not the Hog's on. I've had spotty issues with the Hog, but I've always attributed it to the electrical grid in my house which is why my amp is plugged in somewhere else.

Anyway, it seems the Hog is actually conflicting with the moogerfooger (FreqBox) or my Sansamp (the original version). The chain looks like this:
Bass > Hog > FreqBox >Sansamp >other pedals, none of which seem to cause any issues.
The Hog and FreqBox are powered by the OneSpot, and work fine together if I switch off the Sansamp, which alson with the rest of the pedals on my board are powered by an Artec Power Brick, regulated, isolated power supply.
Conversely, I can keep my Sansamp on if I take the FreqBox out of play (as in, unplugged)..

Any ideas? I've tried swapping the MF and the Hog's place in the chain, but to no avail. Is there some funky polarity here? The MF is center positive, the Hog is center negative (I thought it was positive, looks like that polarity reversal adapter won't get used), and all the others are center negative besides the Sansamp, which also has a reverse-polarity adapter (actually just a clipped and re-soldered lead, which has worked fine) which is 3.5mm center-positive.

 

[giantreptile]

you know, i've never been able to use my moogerfoogers with anything but the wall warts that they came with. i know the one spots should work but they don't. someone else please prove me wrong.

 

[DaZombieWoof]

I am thinking the OneSpot is a switch mode power supply. Whine might be related to that. I presume this problem emerged powering the whole chain off the OneSpot and did not exist prior to adding them all on.

 

[rratajski]

I'm looking at the Moog too.
The power supply they come with is no good with other pedals. I'd keep it ONLY on its provided power supply. The HOG takes a lot of mA too.

 

[dlenaghan]

Then why would the whine go away when I turn off the Sansamp, which is powered by the Artec? I'll experiment and report back.

 

[boomertech]

Some pedal manufacturers insert resistors in the power supply ground. This has the potential of causing all sorts of problems with ground noise when daisy chained with other pedals. If you have access to an OHM meter you can check this by measuring from the power jack ground pin to the signal input jack ground. Pedals with zero ohms will have a better chance of being chained together without issues than the pedals that have resistance.

-Frank

 

[dlenaghan]

Well, turns out it probably has nothing to do with the Sansamp, the Sansamp just really amplifies a whine that's buried under there are a lower volume. Looks like a common ground issue with the Hog/FreqBox. Frustrating as hell, too, since that was the whole reason I got the OneSpot. My regulated Artec is out of spots, plus it one goes up to 12v/200mA on two of the outs, so while both the Hog and FreqBox are of the proper voltage, they're way heavy on the mA, I think 500 for the Hog and 1000+ for the FreqBox. Dammit.

 

[dlenaghan]

This would be less of an issue if I could just use the proper power supply for Korea, but I need an adapter for the supply it came with, and even the ones I get built here for the local voltage (220) are fat and definitely conflict on a power strip. I wonder if this is about when I begin the "I REJECT EFFECTS!!" portion of my career as a bassist....