Power Filtering

In our modules, we provide improved power filtering.  What exactly does that mean?  It means we include or improve two specific features that we think should be part of every effect circuit.

Smoothing

Power gets manipulated in numerous ways inside effects circuits.  A couple examples include changing AC power to DC and changing the voltage.  Whenever you make changes to power, you can introduce "ripples" or waveforms where you don't really want them, which can degrade the sound.  Or sometimes, the power consumption can vary, which can cause very brief power shortages or voltage drops, again degrading the sound.  One way to address these problems is to install power capacitors.  When you plug in the effect, the capacitor stores up a bit of power that can be drawn down when more power is needed, and smooth out the ripples.  Some circuits don't have these at all, or they aren't sized correctly, or they don't have them in some places where they should have them.  We add them or resize them to provide a cleaner and more stable power feed.

Filtering

In addition to using the capacitor(s) to store power and smooth it, you can also reduce noise in the power.  As you probably know, there are various types of noise that can creep into power supplies - EMF and hum are two of the most common types.  These cause high and or low frequency noise in the incoming power, which often gets into the audio portion of the circuit and makes itself heard.  But by adding additional components, these unwanted noise frequencies can be filtered out, or at least greatly reduced.  Of course it is best to use a clean power supply that doesn't introduce these problems, but even then, the noise can creep in through your power cables.  Many circuits do not include these extra components to filter out the noise.  We add this to all our effects.

In fact, we usually add these smoothing and filtering improvements to each module multiple times.  Some of this occurs on every one of our power boards, and some of it is added to the effects boards, too.

The result, particularly when using our quiet 18V Power module, is that we have very low levels of power noise in our effects.  This gives you better tone, particularly in our versions of old effects that didn't include much, if any, of this.  Does that mean some of our modules sound different from those old vintage pedals?  Sort of.  The audio portion isn't affected by this directly.  You'll just have less noise added to the audio.  But it is somewhat unpredictable.  Besides the presence or absence of the filtering and smoothing, the noise is also dependent on where you play, where you get your power, and other environmental issues.  If you play in an EMF-noisy environment or have dirty power, you'll notice more of a difference than if you have a "quiet" environment and clean power.  EMF and power related noise always sounds bad.  It is not one of the "good types of noise" that you get from say, carbon comp resistors or vintage analog delay chips.