HELP NEEDED! Hum/Crackling Behind Playing

Community
1

Hey all. Hoping you guys and gals can help me out.

I play bass through the Quad Cortex. It’s dead silent when I plug in, but as soon as I start playing there is a hum/crackling/fizzle behind the note I’m playing. It almost sounds like a grounding issue, but I have 5 basses and it does it with them all. Plugged straight into my regular amps, all basses are also dead quiet. My assumption is that it has to do with the power, but I’m unsure. I switched to the QC from a line 6 helix, and the helix was super quiet as well. Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

2

how are you monitoring this? Headphones or speakers? What else is connected to the QC? Are you using the factory power supply?

1 Like
3

I have used it with headphones and plugged into my QSC GX5 that then connects to my GK Neo 410. The only other thing connected to it is my expression pedal. I get the fizzle/hum in both situations.

4

Yes. Using the QC power cable.

5

Hmm, mysterious.
Have you tried the Ground Lifts on the QC?
I’ve never seen those make a difference personally, but it’s all a process of elimination

6

Yeah I tried that as well. Made it worse.

7

I’ve been plagued by this forever.

One of the fixes that seemed to work for a while was turning the device off, unplugging everything. Turning it back on and then plugging it all back in
This can sometimes help with the issue. My understanding is, there’s something with the inputs that causes it to go wonky when it’s turned on and there’s something plugged into them

Really dumb fix for such an expensive device…but here we are

8

I’ve also been told to check for how it’s plugged in? Sometimes there can be grounding issues and the ground switch on the quad can just make it worse. So…, there’s that also

9

Do you have any other pedals / amps in your signal chain before or after the QC or in one of its FX loops?

10

I do not. I run the quad directly into my computer via USB

11

I have the same issue - playing with guitars - no problem at all - as soon as I plug my bass in I get a crackle when I play a note. Tried multiple basses, multiple cables, with and without ground lift, using original power plug, it started doing this about 3 months ago. I seems that the input thinks it’s being overloaded.

12

I just fixed it by using the balanced outputs into my pc rather than the 1/4inch outputs