Novation Bass Station - Boss distortion problems

[Hellhound]

Hey guys. I recently bought a Boss DS-1 as my first pedal hoping to use it on my bass station. But when I play my bass station through it, the bass station crackles and hums a lot, even on low distortion settings. When the distortion is cranked up I can hear the oscillator's when no keys are pressed. How can I remove the unwanted noise?

[Solderman]

As far as I know, the BassStations, at least some of them, have a problem with initial gain, so they drone faintly when not playing notes. The distortion pedal boosts the synth's gain enough to make this more obvious.

You might try reducing the volume of the BassStation, and max out the pedal's output volume to try and prevent crackling. As for hum, you would have to identify if the hum source is the synth or the pedal. If it's the synth, you could try connecting it to the pedal with a Ground Loop Isolator.(Be sure to buy a pair of RCA to 1/4 inch plug adapters: Most GLI's use RCA jacks.) If it's the pedal, try using just batteries and if it still hums, the pedal is pretty much no good for this application.

[pricklyrobot]

Guitar pedals can be somewhat hit-or-miss when used on synths (due to level and impedance mismatches), and I've found this to be especially true when it comes to fuzz and distortion pedals (modulation and delay pedals usually get along better with synths). You may just have to try a few different pedals before you find one that sounds good.

[killedaway]

As far as I know, the BassStations, at least some of them, have a problem with initial gain, so they drone faintly when not playing notes. The distortion pedal boosts the synth's gain enough to make this more obvious.

if this is the case, you might just be stuck with the noise. the DS-1 is a noisy pedal in general, to my ears, so you might just stick a cheap noise gate pedal after it to hush the fizz in the quiet spaces.

[Hellhound]

Thanks for the help guys. I think these two just don't work well together. The only way to get rid of the noise completely is to have basically no distortion at all. So, I guess I'll just have to find a better pedal. Can anyone suggest any?