Neunaber Pedals in Archon Effects Loop

Charles Wong

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Sep 8, 2017
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Hello! Newbie here. I am a very happy owner of the Archon 50 combo since Jan this year. I have recently acquired two Neunaber pedals (Wet Reverb and Chroma/Chorus). I've placed both of them in the effects loop together with my Boss DD-500 delay and the noise is unbearable. My loop is the modified one. Pedals are powered by a Decibel Eleven Hot Stone Deluxe.

When I put the Boss DD-500 as a stand alone pedal in the loop, it is very quiet, even though I run about 15ft of cables each way for the send and return. When I put back the Neunabers, the noise is back so I'm pretty sure that the Neunabers are the culprits.

I'm thinking of a few possible solutions:
1) Lehle Parallel L?
2) Empress Buffer + Stereo
3) Suhr Minimix II?
4) Ebtech

Any suggestions are welcome as I hate to get rid of the Neunaber because they are really good-sounding.
 
Have you tried one pedal at a time to see whether only one is the culprit? Loops can be tricky, as you can see from the Boss pedal being fine.

The Ebtech will only solve ground loop issues. You may have a ground loop, may not. There are ways to check.

Lehle products are great, I have two of their switchers, but whether they have a solution for you depends on what's causing the problem. You might want to contact Joki at Lehle's customer service. He's great at figuring out amp/pedal/power supply problems, and helping determine which of their products will solve them.

Boss pedals are buffered. You could check with Neunaber to see if their pedals are. A simple buffer may solve your problem, and there are lots of good ones on the market. Buffers change the impedance of following signals.

Here's an idea you can try yourself with gear you have:

What happens if you simply add the Boss pedal to the Neunaber chain? Try it in the front of the chain, and at the end of the chain, but don't switch it on. The buffer on a Boss pedal is always on, even if the pedal is off. If its buffer solves the problem, you know that an unbuffered signal is the cause.

Effects loops in amps are the devil! They have to work with pro line level rack gear, with consumer level semi-pro gear, and with instrument level pedals, and most have their issues in some way in order to do all three things.
 
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Have you tried one pedal at a time to see whether only one is the culprit? Loops can be tricky, as you can see from the Boss pedal being fine.

The Ebtech will only solve ground loop issues. You may have a ground loop, may not. There are ways to check.

Lehle products are great, I have two of their switchers, but whether they have a solution for you depends on what's causing the problem. You might want to contact Joki at Lehle's customer service. He's great at figuring out amp/pedal/power supply problems, and helping determine which of their products will solve them.

Boss pedals are buffered. You could check with Neunaber to see if their pedals are. A simple buffer may solve your problem, and there are lots of good ones on the market. Buffers change the impedance of following signals.

Here's an idea you can try yourself with gear you have:

What happens if you simply add the Boss pedal to the Neunaber chain? Try it in the front of the chain, and at the end of the chain, but don't switch it on. The buffer on a Boss pedal is always on, even if the pedal is off. If its buffer solves the problem, you know that an unbuffered signal is the cause.

Effects loops in amps are the devil! They have to work with pro line level rack gear, with consumer level semi-pro gear, and with instrument level pedals, and most have their issues in some way in order to do all three things.

Thanks for taking time to answer, LSchefman!

I just tried following your recommendations and the conclusion is that the Neunabers do add noise to the chain. When the Boss DD-500 is alone, it is quiet. The funny thing is- both Neunaber pedals have buffered bypass. Yet...

I'm really disappointed because the Neunaber really sounds good. Maybe I have to seriously consider getting a RV500 or Bigsky instead since they should work well in most effects loop. Or maybe a line-level shifter might help...
 
A line level shifter will only reduce noise if the amp expects line levels instead of the instrument levels that I'd bet the Neunabers have, but check with PRS customer service and Neunaber to see what's what. These days, with so many pedal manufacturers out there, literally anything is possible. There's no real industry standard for this stuff, and maybe there should be!

MIDI was invented in the 80s when the synthesizer makers all over the world agreed to a standard digital protocol to allow synths to play together. So it's possible to address issues like these.

Back when I had Two-Rock amps, people said that certain products worked in their loops, and others didn't. Two-Rock made a copy of the Dumbleator, a tube-based rackmount piece to stick between effects and amplifiers, to address these kinds of issues.
 
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