mrflood wrote:

Those of you who are using their Surfy Bear as part of their pedalboard, any tips for dealing with noise from the pedalboard power supply? I have a Surfy Bear pedal I wanted to put on top of my pedalboard, but I noticed my Voodoo Labs Pedal Power 2+ is giving me some noise when the Surfy Bear is set over it. It seems like the noise is more present when the power supply is next to one side of the Surfy Bear than the other, but I wanted to see if there were any ideas on shielding, etc. I was planning on replacing the clear acrylic panel on the bottom of the Surfy Bear with another panel I could put velcro without ruining the original panel. A couple of thought are to use a sheet metal panel, or a similar acrylic panel with some heavy duty foil or cooper tape for shielding (similar to the standard shielding for a guitar), would either of these work? Any experiences?

I had a Spaceman Orion spring reverb pedal with a similar issue. I did a lot of trouble shooting and learned a lot about springs and power supplies from this.

All spring reverb tanks have two transducers in them; one to convert your guitar signal into mechanical motion in the spring, the other to convert the motion back into an electrical signal. Both transducers are little inductors with magnet cores. Stray EMI will induce a hum if it's strong enough. Part of why onboard tanks are usually mounted away from an amp's transformers.

The hum is from the transducers of the spring tank in the SB likely picking up interference from the electromagnetic fields (EMF) emitted by the transformer in the PP2+. Not all transformer based power supplies are the same, some are noisier than others, most likely dependent on the quality of the transformer used.

For example, I had a couple of power supplied used to trouble shoot my Orion pedal. The TRex Chameleon power supply emitted a LOT more noise than a Cioks Powerfactor, both transformer based, but the Powerfactor uses a higher quality transformer compared to the Chameleon.

Digital switching based power supplies which do not use a transformer (like the power supply provided with the SB), will not have this type of interaction. So for your pedalboard, the best solution to eliminate the hum would be to replace the PP2+ with a switching based power supply, such as the Onespot.

Last edited: Jan 20, 2018 15:46:41

While I did not try the Orion with the Onespot CS7, it should work for your pedalboard without hum as it is a transformerless power supply. The CS12 however would probably have some hum since it uses a transformer for the 9VAC output on the supply. The Dunlop/MXR ISOBrick or one of the Strymon supplies are also pedalboard type power supplies that do not use transformers and so should be hum free.

Also important to note - and I assume you are already doing this with the PP2+ - but the power requirements for the Surfy Bear exceed most outputs on pedalboard type power supplies, so you would still need to use the power supply that comes with the SB. With the PP2+ I assume you were plugging it in to the courtesy outlet? No such courtesy outlet on the CS7.

Thanks mrFlood, great that it works for you. Unfortunately for me it does not matter where I place the tank, it hums too much in a radius of aprox. 20 cm around the PP. Not sure why though, maybe because of the main voltage over here is 230 volts?

And thanks for the info Benevan, that sounds really good. I’m aware the 1 spot’s 12v outlets don’t deliver enough current for the SB. A dedicated power adapter is the way to go indeed.

N0_Camping4U wrote:

I recently jumped back into this topic... I'm interested in the surfy bear + trem.. Anyone have an all-in-one? Considering building one. Looking for opinions/videos/thoughts.

Thanks

I've got one. I did some experimenting, that's why I used the screw terminals on the boards. The reverb goes before the trem in case you wondered. It just sounds a lot better. I've added a switch to bypass the trem but I never use it because it doesn't make any difference if it's in the chain or not. Here are some pics:

Here's my combo - I did the same as Gillette, reverb, then tremolo. I just wired both boards up, mounted them in the chassis, then ran the out of the reverb board to the in of the tremolo board, then to the out jack. Worked great!

I originally used a separate foot switch, but recently installed a switch on the top of the unit - no pics.

"You can't tell where you're going if you don't know where you've been"

Last edited: Jan 29, 2018 16:31:47

Fab job to both Sonichris and Gillette! I'm still terrified of building mine.

mj
bent playing for benter results
Do not attempt to adjust your TV set.
https://www.facebook.com/Bass-VI-Explorers-Club-179437279151035/
https://www.facebook.com/Lost-Planet-Shamen-366987463657230/

How do you power these Reverb+Tremolo combos?
Can you simply split the power leads from the 12v source?
I’m guessing the current draw for each circuit is modest enough that it wouldn’t overdraw the switching power supply.

Squink Out!

I currently run mine on a 12v 1amp wall wart. No issues. I have the good switching power supply for it, but haven't had a reason to put it in yet.

I recently got the parts to do the "color" switch mod, and might put the new power supply in when I do that.

"You can't tell where you're going if you don't know where you've been"

This is the one that was recommended by several other members here. I bought mine from this guy, because, well, he had the cheapest price. No idea if that's still the case. I'm going to mount it, and hard wire it using the same hole I used for the wall wart plug in.

Meanwell power supply

"You can't tell where you're going if you don't know where you've been"

I decided to modify my tool box build - here it is in it's original configuration.

It had the whole unit built into the lid. My original idea was to have the rest of the box to use as storage. It worked ok, but it was top heavy, and I couldn't really get very much stuff into the bottom. So at one point I rigged it with a power strip in the bottom, and a bunch of power ports in the front. But it was kind of hacky. Then I saw the pre-made Surfybear. I liked how low profile it was, so I removed the lid, and built a bottom for it out of 1/4" wood, and covered it in that speaker carpet stuff. I also just added the "color" mod, which is pretty cool! I hacked up a spare faceplate sticker to make the 1-6 numbers (totally hack). It has a port for the surfytrem power too, if needed. This is kind of my "test" unit, and I keep threatening to build another tool box lid model, fixing the few little nit-picky things about this one I know I could do better now.

Someday I might get around to putting a real finish on my original SurfyTrem pedal.

These things sure are fun!

"You can't tell where you're going if you don't know where you've been"

Last edited: Jan 31, 2018 15:03:23