Barber Electronics forum.

Hey guys, new here but been wanting to join. My question is, when the burn unit is stacked with another pedal, like my ltd, is there a lot of noise anyone is getting? That's with just the green side on only. Also, are there any mods to tighten up the burn unit. Great sound, just like it a bit tighter.

cygnusx1 wrote:Hey guys, new here but been wanting to join. My question is, when the burn unit is stacked with another pedal, like my ltd, is there a lot of noise anyone is getting? That's with just the green side on only. Also, are there any mods to tighten up the burn unit. Great sound, just like it a bit tighter.

The only way to make it tighter is to swap the corner frequency cap for a smaller value. I would expect noise when stacking any two overdrive pedals, the less noise the feed from your pickups, the less noise the pedals will amplify.

Thanks Dave. I use pretty quiet pickups. Lollar, Klein. The only difference is I use 500k volume pots. And yeah I guess stacking will cause that.

cygnusx1 wrote:Thanks Dave. I use pretty quiet pickups. Lollar, Klein. The only difference is I use 500k volume pots. And yeah I guess stacking will cause that.

Are you using single coils or humbuckers? If they are single coil are they hum-cancelling or vintage style?

They are all custom hand wound single coils. As for the hum canceling, they are all pretty darn quiet except for my epic 55's from klein which are pretty true to the real thing. For some reason the burn unit just has more noise in it than I think it used to. Not unhappy, just something I noticed.

cygnusx1 wrote:They are all custom hand wound single coils. As for the hum canceling, they are all pretty darn quiet except for my epic 55's from klein which are pretty true to the real thing. For some reason the burn unit just has more noise in it than I think it used to. Not unhappy, just something I noticed.

I would guess your Burn Unit is amplifying noise from devices before the Burn Unit's input (cables, pickups pedals). There is not really much to get "noisier", if you are concerned just swap the op-amp, it's the only active device in the pedal that could become noisier. Most expensive "hand-wound" reproduction single coils are fairly noisy, that's the nature of reproducing noisy vintage pickups . There are some great hum cancelling single coil sized options out there, but they won't have the trendy names. I am testing some pickups from Dimarzio right now which are much more impressive than the scatter-wound non-potted "boutique" that I had been using. I'll probably post a video at some point showing the differences between noise in currently available pickups. I have a set of 36th anniversary PAF from Dimarzio (humbucker) in my Hamer Artist that are quieter and more versatile than the other well known PAF clones that I have had. In back to back comparisons the Dimarzios sound just as sweet as the well known clones, but the Dimarzio pickups handle high gain much better...food for thought.

Hey Dave, it's been a bit, which cap are you referring to? Thanks man.

And Dave, did you ever post audio/video of the PAFs?