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i use the EHX Attack Decay a lot, and it's usually OK though it has an annoying habit of forgetting the expression pedal settings unless you save them as a preset. some of the time. i had to memorize the combination of switches required to reset the EP curve for Attack because it'd just go "derp" every few days. but today it decided to try a new level of dysfunction and weirdness. maybe it drank too much last night. sometimes you don't hear last call (h/t Ben Ottewell). its first trick was refusing to shut off. no matter what i did it refused to stop and made a little irritated scratchy noise when i cycled the (soft i.e. relay-driven) switch, so i had to pull the power cord to kill it. three or four times. factory reset time! phony setting-mania has bitten the dust! the unit now powers off normally, but when it's running the note that's fading in sounds like it's going through a broken Tube Screamer until it reaches a particular volume level, at which point it then abruptly changes to a normal, clear sound. i've been all through the manual, done multiple factory resets, turned all the "Harmonix" fuzz circuit knobs all the way down in case it's bleeding through, and tried everything else i can think of or extrapolate from the manual, but i can't make it go away. does anyone have any idea of what i can do short of pinging one of Mike Matthews' Minions or pulling it off the front-end board and just using a volume pedal? i can't do the kinds of textures achieved by fading notes and then looping over them that is integral to my looping aesthetic if the note drastically and abruptly changes in texture when it's 30% of the way in. interesting effect, but not what i'm looking for. Chase Bliss would probably design it into a $300 pedal if they heard it, though. it can't be the cabling because it wouldn't clear up after it reached a particular signal level, or at least i've never seen that in over 50 years of handling guitar and other audio cables. i suspect it's probably in the microprocessors and it's doomed, but i thought i might as well ask. it was fun while it lasted. perhaps the universe is telling me that i've gotten too complicated. if you come up with anything, i'll be looking for guitar shops within a reasonable drive of Walden Pond. that's what i get for saying positive things about EXH on Reddit.

Check the power- with digital fx it’s almost always power.

the power supply is a Voodoo Labs that's only a few months old so i doubt that's the problem, but i'll put it on its own OneSpot and check. the 9V cable could be bad. the thing is, the AD has been running on this PS for months with no issues at all other than forgetting the EP settings, and was also fine on the MXR DC Brick that was there before which i had to replace because the Shallow Water hated it. today it just had a nervous breakdown. i think whatever fault made it refuse to turn off is also responsible for the distortion, and that some component in the part of the circuit that does the beginning of the fade-in curve and is linked to the bypass switch has gone. maybe a chip, maybe a transistor, maybe a capacitor--it could always be a cap, those evil little fuckers--a line of code, who knows? but that's my most logical guess. nothing noticeable or audible happened, it just went nuts. it was fine for a couple of hours today before it just started refusing to turn off.