Ticking

[Mark Hammer]

Chatting with a forum buddy at a musician gear swap yesterday, he told me that his Ibanez Rotary Chorus had an annoying audible tick, even in bypass mode.  I started to get all smartass and declare "Oh, you can fix that easily"....until he said "But when I plug into a buffered pedal before the Rotary Chorus I don't get the ticking".

  My magic sword went limp.

Why would buffering of the input signal change the propensity to tick?  Inquiring minds want to know.

[Ben N]

Just speculating, but could there be a place where the extra current "swamps" the clock-signal bleed? Analagous perhaps to old car radios that get all kinds of noisy--except when they have a strong signal?

[ayayay!]

Do you have details on other variables?  Like power supply config (type, daisychained/single isolated, etc.)

I've seen this before.  Giving it a dedicated, grounded, isolated PS fixed it.  (And preferably not a switching type.)

As far as the buffered pedal in front, dunno.  Higher impedence into the input is all I can guess, but it shouldn't be THAT much more should it? 

[Ronsonic]

Chatting with a forum buddy at a musician gear swap yesterday, he told me that his Ibanez Rotary Chorus had an annoying audible tick, even in bypass mode.  I started to get all smartass and declare "Oh, you can fix that easily"....until he said "But when I plug into a buffered pedal before the Rotary Chorus I don't get the ticking".

  My magic sword went limp.

Why would buffering of the input signal change the propensity to tick?  Inquiring minds want to know.

My guess is it is the input section where the noise is being picked up and the lower impedance of the buffer swamps out the noise. Things I'd look for: conductive / semiconductive smut on the circuit board creating a path between LFO and signal; Poor solders / flux joints in signal path increasing Z and tendency to pick up noise; Switching FETs not going quite as open as they should or not closing completely; Bad design/layout, not much you can do about that.

Presumably these did work once, so there should be a diagnosis and cure possible.

[Pablo1234]

What a coincidence, I just built a chorus peddle this week and had a similar issue. I have a +/-16v Power supply for my effects I made myself. I made the LFO board separate from the BBD board and signal splitter/mix board. I was so hyped that my boards looked as well as they did I just jumped into the BBD board and LFO board and hooked em up quick. Without the mix it sounds just out of tune, kinda interesting but not very usefull. It also had a click that was obviously from the LFO. I then hooked up the Signal board and poof it was gone like magic. Its actualy a heck of a lot quieter then my boss chorus ensamble and boss stereo chorus peddles. I may rape them for the bbd chips and make 2 more of mine.