Re: Vortex Noise

["max valentino" <ekstasis1@hotmail.com>]

Hmmmm..'tho I am not using a Vortex (but sometimes I wish I had one of 
those 
truely cool boxes to mutate thru), I did experience a perhaps similar 
condition with other "lower-grade" Lexicon units.  Namely my JamMan and 
Alex 
(a great verb and fx for bass, BTW). I did not think that either were 
excessively noisy....but just enough to be irritating. And the more layers 
I 
put in the JamPup, the more noise was recycled (of course). After a lot of 
fussing about I found two remedies:
First...those wall warts that Lexicon ships with their "cheaper" units are 
terribly noisy. My rack runs off a Furman PL Plus and with no signal thru 
anything, having those wall warts (the Lexi ones)just plugged into the 
Furman and the JamBoy and Alex mounted in the rack....enough hiss was 
produced to be irritating. So I plugged the wallwart into an extension 
cord 
and moved it away from the rack....viola! no more hiss! Next I bought a 
small square power strip/surge protector (like Radio shack and such sells 
for home computers) and velcro mounted that at the very back of my 
rack...as 
far away from all components as possible. That power strip is just for the 
wall warts. I found thru some experiments that if you move the Lexicon 
power 
supplies about 6-8" from their units it removes the annoying hiss. (it is 
also a good idea to keep those suckers away form anything else in the rack 
as well!) I don't have a Vortex...but it sounds like some of you might be 
experiencing a similar effect...
about thoise effect chains....I found that running a processor direct to 
the 
ins of a looper is NOT an efficient route. I, like most of you, like to 
print fx on my loops, but running an fx unit to the input of a looper 
(either JamMan or EDP) simply adds to the noise. the simple answer is to 
use 
a mixer with multiple aux sends. then you can return the loops to a 
channel 
and send on to further fx.  But if you don't want to cart around a mixer 
and 
deal with all that patching, Raven Labs sells a MDB1 which is a three 
channel line mixer/direct box/buffer amp with 3 mono/1 stereo channel (all 
with 10megOhm impedances) and a sidechain (mono) aux loop. IIt's 1/2 rack 
size and run on batteries (100hours running time on 2 9v)
I use that and a Raven Labs Instrument preamp....one aux loop for looper, 
one for fx (running the pre into the mixer/fx pre looper) and then that 
goes 
off to the amp.....zero (well, VERY< VERY little) noise.
It is a quiet and efficient little setup....and has cut back on th4e 
annoying buzzes and noise greatly!
Of course I am looping solo bass....this kinda setup will work I am sure 
for 
you guitarists also.....
Max



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