Orange Amps Forum

Sorry for the mass picturing, but I need some help. I just hooked up my board, not entirely sure on the order of pedals as of yet - but y'all gave me some good recommendations to try! Anyways, I'm not getting anything out of the board. I have attached pictures so you can see exactly what I'm looking at. And I used the SKB manual card that came with to hook it up right. Basically, everything is cabled up, I can hear a hiss out of the amp but no sound. When I engage any one of the pedals or all of them, i can hear the guitar very faintly with the effect in the signal. The amp is plugged into the board power supply too - it's my little 20 watt Crush. Plugged into the wall or the board I had the same issue.

I checked the cables one by one straight from guitar to amp - no issues, I get guitar sound. I went through each pedal one by one (with the pedal plugged into the board power source), so output of pedal straight to the amp, and input straight from guitar. Bam, I get guitar sound and effect sound when pedal is engaged. The suggested setup for going straight into an amp, with mono input/outputs from each pedal is here (sorry for the blur, but the SKB manual image is so tiny!


Here's the actual board setup, so you can see I have the inputs matching. Trust me that the cables here are going to where they are supposed to go! it's hard to capture it all:


Here's the whole board, note I had the cable coming from the TC Alter Ego (far left pedal) unplugged at the moment when I snapped this:


Any ideas?? I'm sure there's something really stupid that I'm doing or not doing!!

2 ideas.

1) At the time you may have been running out of the Stereo output of the Alter Ego (may not have but I can't tell as it isn't pictured).

2) You have a dodgy pancake cable (I hate those cables as I find they often suck tone or crap out).

OU818 wrote:2 ideas.

1) At the time you may have been running out of the Stereo output of the Alter Ego (may not have but I can't tell as it isn't pictured).

2) You have a dodgy pancake cable (I hate those cables as I find they often suck tone or crap out).

Was not running out of the stereo out on the Alter Ego, I know it's hard to see but I'm all mono!

I think I found the culprit, crappy pancake patch cable I believe, as I removed one and replaced it with a regular cable. Everything worked!

I feel my vilification of pancake leads has once again been vindicated.

Everybody wins

OU818 wrote:I feel my vilification of pancake leads has once again been vindicated.

Everybody wins

Oh my god, yeah, I think I'll be taking these back and getting property leads for this board!!

I have these and really like them. Basically a LAVA cable at 1/2 the price.

http://www.mammothelectronics.com/Chand ... rfuse5.htm

Same thing happened to me with a patch cable a while back. It would completely cut all sound when twisted slightly the wrong way, and I had no idea what was going on for awhile until I went through and checked every cable. After that I upgraded to some more reliable ones and thankfully haven't had it happen since.

Invin wrote:Same thing happened to me with a patch cable a while back. It would completely cut all sound when twisted slightly the wrong way, and I had no idea what was going on for awhile until I went through and checked every cable. After that I upgraded to some more reliable ones and thankfully haven't had it happen since.

Yeah, I think that's basically what I'm running into here. I think I'm going to take all of these cables back to the shop and see if they have something more substantial. If they won't take them then I'll throw them into the sea where they can never again cause anyone else any pain! (not really!)

And I'll also have to check out those Mammoths, Jondog! Thanks for the link.

Jondog wrote:I have these and really like them. Basically a LAVA cable at 1/2 the price.

http://www.mammothelectronics.com/Chand ... rfuse5.htm

I like the look of that kit.

Could you compare it to the lava kit or another lava cable? I'm serisouly wondering, I know they don't have a monopoly on good quality cables, but the only lava cable I have is great - audible difference. And now that I've started gathering a small (growing... ) pedal collection, good quality patch cable will soon be a must.....

Remove all but one pedal from the equation. Guitar -> SKB gtr in -> SKB pedal send -> Only one Pedal -> SKB ped Ret -> SKB Out -> Amp. If that works you've eliminated the SKB being at fault. Then add pedals one by one.

Thinline_slim wrote:Remove all but one pedal from the equation. Guitar -> SKB gtr in -> SKB pedal send -> Only one Pedal -> SKB ped Ret -> SKB Out -> Amp. If that works you've eliminated the SKB being at fault. Then add pedals one by one.

That would have been a good way to do it! But I managed to find the cable!