ilovefuzz.com

So I have an awesome modded Blue Box that I got from an awesome forum member here, featuring a switch to change it from the standard blue box sound, to the C11 mod, I believe. It sounds much better with the mod. I was fiddling around with my board earlier, and after unplugging some stuff and putting them back in their respective spots, all of a sudden the fuzz tone started leaking out into my clean tone when the pedal was bypassed. This has never happened before, and it's very noticeable. With the pedal off on the clean channel, you can hear the fizziness of the fuzz in the background-it's not too loud, but again very noticeable. It becomes more pronounced when I flick the switch to the standard blue box tone. With the switch in the modded position, it's a little less noticeable, but still there. I thought one of the reasons for this mod was to eliminate pedal bleed through. And before last night, this had never been an issue. At first I thought the pedal was only bleeding through on my amp's clean channel, but then I realized it was doing it on the distortion channel, as well. With the distortion channel on and the pedal bypassed, there was a noticeable crackling sound when I wasn't playing. I pulled out the Voodoo lab power supply cable, and the crackling went away. Same on the clean channel-take the pedal's power supply away, and no pedal bleed through. I tried using all the power supply cables on my board, and the result was always the same. I tried playing just through the pedal with nothing else in the signal chain, while using One Spot power, and same problem. I tried fiddling around with the cables that I had going into the pedal on my board, to no avail. It's like the pedal decided to start bleeding through when bypassed out of nowhere. Pretty frustrating, as I love the Blue Box, but this is the 2nd Blue Box I've had where something went funky.

Any suggestions?

If it helps, I keep the pedal in a loopmaster looper, along with my other fuzzes. I don't know why that would make a difference though. Also the instrument cables and power supply cables under my board, are very messy right now and not bundled together. But the Blue Box is bleeding through with a One Spot too, and all my other pedals are behaving as they should on my board.

I noticed this as a problem when I had the pedal early in the chain, but it would go away completely when you placed it after a buffered pedal!

Sounds like it's the bypass switching, you could have someone mod it for input grounding true bypass or build a buffer inside if one before it solves the issue or depending on the switching (I don't know how old your pedal is or if MXR still use the old input connected to the output style switching) possibly there's potential to mod that.

Gotta gut shot?

I wonder if the stomp switch is failing. Not completely disconnecting the circuit from the dry signal. I can't remember if the Blue Box is true bypass. Or the insides of the switch could be dirty too. Spray some Deoxit in the switch and actuate is a bunch of times, let it dry for a few minutes and try it again.