Digitech Whammy adapter causing bad hum

  • Thread starter Thread starter noisenet
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noisenet

Member
Heya,
I use a PedalPad pedal board, with their included power supply unit. When I introduce my Whammy II pedal, connecting the AC plug into it's "courtesy" outlet, I'm getting an enormous hum in my signal. I initially moved the power unit to one side of the board, with the Wah at the other due to this adapter causing a bad hum when the wah is engaged.

Anyhow, last night I experimented with running an extension cord from the outlet to the adapter and placing it down into the pedal board. This helped, but not as much as I'd like.

I know Voodoo makes their Pedal Power AC unit, but it's like $150 or so, and I'd really prefer to not pay that much money to solve what appears to be a simple problem.

Does anyone know of any shielding methods I might use to alleviate this problem? I know some guitar manufacturers line the inside cavity of a guitar with copper foil to shield it. Is something like this feasible for the AC adapter, or would that not work?

I'm pretty much at my wits end with this, and have some pretty important gigs coming up next week, starting with this Sunday and would like to have this problem fixed before then.

Thanks in advance for any help you can give on this.......
 
Does the hum still occur when the whammy is not in the signal chain but the adapter is still powering it? I notice my whammy introduces a decent amount of noise to my signal chain as well.
 
Unfortunately yes. In fact, if I disconnect all signal cables from the Whammy, and run my chain without the Whammy in it, the hum is still present......
 
You may have a bad Power Supply. If you were located in the Chicago area, i'd let you borrow mine to test out. Is everything properly grounded? Have you tried pluggin your whole board into a different outlet, maybe even in a different building?
 
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