Fuzz Factory operating hum - how to avoid

[jonboper]

So I've got a Fuzz Factory, bought it retail, and absolutely love it. I'm still really new to building, but am taking on a Fuzz Factory-like project. My only complaint about my Fuzz Factory is the operating hum that gets louder the longer the pedal is on. Is there a way to eliminate this noise from the circuit?

[thermionix]

the operating hum that gets louder the longer the pedal is on

Shouldn't be happening.  Are you using a power supply?  Try a battery, see if it still hums.

[jonboper]

Shouldn't be happening.

But it does, and always has. I've read lots of forum posts from others with the same experience - you'll commonly read things like, "It's just a noisy pedal."

[antonis]

If so, you have to live with it..

[thermionix]

But still...are you using a power supply?  Have you tried a battery?

[Addy Bart]

If the hum you're experiencing is a high pitched whine, the Huminator between the power and the fuzz factory circuit should fix that. I've added it on a daughter board to quite a few of the effects I've made, but it wouldn't be a bad idea to make a dedicated box that you can stick between the power supply and use on any noisy pedal you have.

http://guitar-fx-layouts.42897.x6.nabble.com/Huminator-II-Power-Filtering-td36872.html

[jonboper]

Hmm...just built a rullywow Princess Rawr and am having the exact same experience with that...now I'm not sure what to blame: guitar (schecter circa 2003), power supply (voodoolabs pp2+ circa 2008)...or me.

[jonboper]

Although no other pedal I have or have built (yet, except the FF and the princess rawr) have had this effect...I don't know. Should I call this 'NEVERMIND', probably. You've all had issues like this with noise? Just certain pedals?

[Phoenix]

Zachary Vex took a long time to be talked around into adding DC jacks or even LED indicators to his pedals - the originals didn't feature them at all, they were intended to be powered by battery only and to be distinctive enough to be able to tell if they were on or not without an indicator LED. Anyway, the point is that because he designed them with the intent to be powered by batteries only, and not by power supplies, he omitted extra filtering and decoupling from the designs that would have been needed (or at least best practice) if they were intended to be powered by power supplies, because running off a clean battery source, this wasn't required. I know at least the early pedals when he started introducing DC jacks and LED's didn't add these extra bits of circuitry which really should've been added, and I don't know if that's changed - it's been a long time since I've been inside a ZVex pedal. So adding a filter cap on the DC input may solve all your problems if that is missing, or an RC filter on the DC input if it still doesn't should definitely kill any noise problems. Good luck.