boss volume pedal turned scratchy after re-cabling and a new config makes it go away?

crystal_andersn

New member
My Boss 500L became scratchy when it is hooked up like it used to be but now a new setup makes it quiet again?

Typically, and for the past several months, I have been running a chain like this: guitar > little big muff > boss phaser > boss chorus > boss 500L volume pedal into channel 1 of a behringer xenyx 802 mixer. this is all hooked up in mono. i then have an sl-20 and 2 dd-20's hooked up the fx loop of the mixer. these are run in stereo all using ts cables. i know this is(was) not the best setup for guitar tone but I wanted a permanent setup at the house for guitar playing/recording as well as a project i do with a couple of keyboards. everything plugged in and ready to go at the drop of a hat.

so last night i wanted to see what i was missing out on tonewise and decided to run the entire setup (previous chain as mentioned but in this setup a mono out from the volume pedal is sent to the mono in of the sl-20 then stereo in/out to the 2 dd-20s ) in stereo into channels 1 and 2 of the mixer.

i was using an h4n out of the mixer to do recordings of overall volume and things like that to see what kind of tone loss/gain i was dealing with. noticed some static and popping when touching the strings. i play a gretsch 5120 so i didn't think this was a major issue as the noise wasn't huge and figured it could have something to do with the mild storm outside. lots of humidity in the air. idk. the volume pedal was quiet as a mouse like normal though.

sooo - i played for a while and made some recordings. no big deal. the completist in me however, wanted to then hook it immediately back up the old way and make recordings so i could compare the 2 sounds back to back. this time though, when i plugged everything back in the way it used to be (fx loop) i'm getting some static towards the final toe down position of the volume pedal. in fact if i'm playing and just putting pressure back and forth on the pedal (while it is still fully toe down) it is quite scratchy. and of course its driving me insane.

re-cable it back up to version #2 (out of the fx loop of the mixer) and its quiet again. still using a mono in and out of the volume pedal in both configs.

i figured this must be some sort of dc leakage from the stereo volume pedal (i feel like i've heard this sound before when i was experimenting hooking things up with different cabling - like trying to use trs y splitters because i wasn't 100% sure what would be best).

but why would it be scratchy now when it wasn't before? could i have introduced a static charge into the volume pedal somehow?
 
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