Problems with hum in my board

Problems with hum

First of all: let’s make something VERY clear – I’m no technician … I don’t know much about what’s going on inside my amps, pedals and stuff. I’m a pro guitar player who is really serious about how my set-up sounds. And even though I have many years experience with this, I still get surprised. Here are some experiences that might save you some problems with hum.

I’ve written about my pedals, boards and my power supplies. I’ve also written about my many learning experiences from setting everything up correctly, so it should be quite easy to make everything work.

I was ready to mount everything to my board. I will describe all my pedals as average or above. The power supply – the Ciokolate is awesome. I had the order of the pedals and had decided what outputs I should use on the Ciokolate. The pedals got the right voltage and the right current. I used the right cables so the polarity was ok and they all were on an isolated outputs. It should be working – and it did!!

But I noticed some seriously hum from my Plexi Drive deluxe.

sr-pedalboard-overview
Some of the pedals in my board … I love the sound of my Plexi and Euphoria – awesome pedals 🙂

Continue reading “Problems with hum in my board”

My pedal board 2016

This summer I decided to renew my board. I got a new guitar and suddenly my overdrive pedal wasn’t the right one. I had loved it for years, but with this new guitar it wasn’t the right one (they have grown apart, but are still friends). That made me start searching for a new overdrive. Fun but dangerous. My pedal board ended up with five new pedals, just because that overdrive wasn’t the right one. Try to explain that to you someone who doesn’t play guitar. 

Panorama pedalboard
Soren Reiff – pan pedal board

The technically stuff

Here’s something about the pedals and how the signal runs thru my pedal board 2016.

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Best advice – buying a guitar amp

I’ve written about how you optimize your practicing, and what you should consider if either you or someone you know should invest in a guitar. Today I’ll write my best advice if you or someone around you is considering buying a guitar amp.

Once again I’ll start to mention that this is written to advice beginners, or to inspire you if you are a serious guitar player with years of experience, and therefore a person people would turn to, to get your help in buying guitar related stuff 🙂

My best advice on buying a guitar amp

This one is probably an advice many parent will love because it’s very short and clear: don’t!!

What? … Yes, if you are about to start playing electric guitar, don’t buy an amp.

“Why not? … I got an electric guitar and want to practice?! … You just wrote that I should buy an electric guitar instead of an acoustic, why shouldn’t I have an amp too??”

Soren Reiff's Mesa Boogie Mark IV
My Mesa Boogie Mark IV – a super amps with tons of possibilities … but do you need that?

Ok, let me explain. If you just bought an electric guitar, I’ll asume you’re not very sure about  the following things: Continue reading “Best advice – buying a guitar amp”

Pedalboards versus rack-setups part 3

This blogpost is the third in a series of three about pedalboards versus rack-setups

In the first post in this series I wrote about the equipment I started out with and in the second post I told you about all the advantages I had from my rack-setup – today I’ll write about what I’m using at the moment and why I chosen as I’ve done.

Actually there wasn’t that many reasons for considering other solutions than my small rack-setup … but there was a few.

One was that I started to play more abroad. Often it was impossible to get the same setup I had back home – meaning that even if I brought my presets with me on a memory-card, it wouldn’t work. And in addition to that, it was very expensive to rent something like my normal rig – and really a waste of money, when I wasn’t able to use the presets I brought with me. I also got tired of trying to duplicate something from my normal setup, within the short time we had for soundcheck. Therefore I started to have smaller programmable boards with me every time I played outside Scandinavia.

Soren Reiff's setup 2013 - a Mesa Boogie Mark IV combo, and a full packed board
My setup 2013 – a Mesa Boogie Mark IV combo, and a full packed board

Continue reading “Pedalboards versus rack-setups part 3”