Hi folks,
I've been making a pedal board recently, and have run into a spot of bother.
I made the board itself from some re-purposed Ikea Gorm shelving, and was rather pleased with the result. I bought a Caline CP-05 power supply and I was up and running, no problems and sounding good.
I began to think about some sort of case to transport it safely to gigs and to store it away in. I managed to find the perfect old suitcase which was an exact fit. Just the retro look I was after.
I decided I liked the pedal board being in the case, and thought "Why take it out?" If I was going to use it in situ I was going to to need a way to plug the my guitar in and have an outlet for the amp. So, I reckoned that I would put and input and output into the pedal board, meaning you just plugged into the board and connect it to an amp. I would then have a couple of brass grommeted holes in the case allowing cables to pass through.
I fitted two sockets at each side to the back of the board and soldered short cables and jacks to them to plug into and out of the pedal chain.
Now, this is where the problems started. As I said above, if I plug into the first pedal and out of the last everything is fine and dandy. Clean sound. When I plug into the new sockets suddenly I have a buzzing which must be caused by an earthing issue. If I bypass the new sockets and plug directly into the pedals themselves the problem disappears.
My understanding of guitar electrics is very very poor, and would love to hear from anyone who knows what my problem might be and maybe has a solution to my woes.
Thanking you in advance. Cheers folks.
Replies
You are welcome. It occurs to me to ask how old that cable is that you wired to the socket. As cable get old they can develop problems like this. It takes more than a couple of years but it can happen. Also, If you have an ohm meter or a continuity checker you can make sure the wiring is good from jack to plug. All you have to do is measure tip to tip and sleeve to sleeve. Those should read good continuity or 0 ohms. Then measure tip to sleeve which should read no continuity or infinite ohms. If you read anything besides infinite ohms when measuring tip to sleeve the wire is bad.
Brand new cable, sockets and jacks.
I'll have a think about getting a multimeter.
Cheers
I'm not seeing how you have wired that socket but look at this diagram.
The shield in your cable should be soldered to the -Negative/sleeve terminal and the signal wire should be wired to the +Positive/Tip terminal. The red in the picture indicates that those items are electrically the same. If you have the signal and shield soldered correctly, I am a bit bewildered because it should be no different than a on piece cable (electrically that is). There are only a couple of things that could go wrong. A Cold solder joint or two - fixed by remelting the solder and making sure there is no movement when it solidifies. A missing connection - fixed by soldering on the missing connection. Backwards connection where the shield and signal are on the wrong terminals - simply re-solder to the correct terminals.
Nice looking package, by the way.
Hope this helps,
Gary
Thanks Gary
Yeah, I realise that not being able to see the socket wiring doesn't help. I have them the right way round. I double checked them and actually used that exact same diagram. But you may well be right about the soldering, I'm pretty poor in that area. I'll give that a go tomorrow.
Thanks for your help, mate.
Hedley