Diezel Herbert Mk2 very loud noise with AX8 in the loop

Jacky Thrilla

Jacky Thrilla

Member
Hi all,

I am quite new in this board and I am not a native speaker.

I've recently bought a used Herbert Mk2 (I guess it's from 2010 or 2011). It's a versatile and great sounding amp, very well designed, which was the reason I decided to buy one. Played only with my guitar plugged in, everything is working well. Massive sounding amp, I love it.

Now that I want to use my gear with which I am recording at home together with the Herbert I ran into the following issue:
As soon as I hook up my Fractal AX8 with recommended humbuster cables (4CM) into any of the three FX-Loops of the Herbert the amp begins to produce a very loud noise, I mean it's not just a loud hiss or something it's a really loud hum. It's so loud you can't play the amp anymore. Even on bedroom level the hum is way too much.

Doing some tests:
1. Unplug the Input cable: the noise is gone
2. Unplug any of the cable from the FX-Loop: noise is still there
3. Connecting the AX8 in the same fashion with another amp (Marshall DSL f.ex.) no noise at all, so it seems not the pedal is the source for that

What I did to resolve the issue:
First thing that came into my mind: V1 preamp tube is faulty! So I decided to replace the whole tube set, the preowner told me he never changed the tubes. That wasn't quite correct, he at least changed the V1 preamp tube, because all other tube were Ruby Tubes except the V1 it was a TAD 12AX7. I replaced preamp and powertubes with a matched set from TAD but nothing changes with the noise, still the same amount of noise is going on.

I already tried to tweak around with the global I/O settings of the AX8, but the amount of noise varies just a little, because it's so loud.

Reason?
So, did anybody experience a similar issue with his Diezel?

Greetings
Jacky
 
Don't have a Diezel but if the AX8 works properly with other amps I would guess that the FX loop on the Diezel must be faulty. Did you check the connection points on the amp FX loop?
 
Thx Habuman,

I'll try to hook up my "analogue" Pedalboard to the Herbert (I'll have to pick it up at the rehearsal room) just to see, if my dead quiet Pedalboard produces noise as well in the Herberts FX-Loop.

I'll keep you posted.

Greetings
Jacky
 
Update:
I did some more tests and my conclusion is, that the AX8 doesn't work well with the FX-Loop of an Diezel Herbert MkII. It does work well with the FX-Loop of a Marshall DSL100 though...
I bought a set of Humbuster cables and a Lehle P-Split isolation box for lifting the ground, but the noise is still way too much.
My "analog" pedalboard is dead silent in the Herberts FX-Loop.

Has anyone experience with the FX8 and the Herbert MkII in particular?

Greetings Jacky
 
This is the end of the story:
IMG_9943.jpg

Now I built a new pedalboard with a BOSS GT-1000 as a Multi-FX for the DIezel Herbert (not using the preamps of course!) and as a MIDI-controller to switch amp channels and functions on the Herbert. Since the pitch shifting on the BOSS sounds poor, I decided to use the Digitech "The Drop" to do this job for me. I've played this pedalboard now for the first few hours in the rehearsal room and it works as a charm. The Herbert is a monster and sounds so good. It's not just a metal amp.

The Lehle P-Split makes the low noise setup here even less noisier!

Made my own multicore cable to connect the pedalboard with 4CM to the amp.

Now the AX8 stays at home as my recording device for which it is the perfect tool.

Greetings
JT
 
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