Please help me. I cant solve this problem

[6tring]

First of all I would like to say hello and extend a friendly handshake to everyone.
I've been reading alotta stuff here and I must say you guys really have alotta knowledge and I'm glad to be a part of this community.

Well heres my problem and its a very maddening one. I've been to numerous sites and have left to continue my quest for the answer.
I feel like a drifter going from city to city searching for a golden orb or something lol.

O.k. I have a gnx 3k a zoom g2.1u and a zoom g9.2tt all in x-cond. For guitars I have a Jackson RR1 (my baby) a Jackson dinky and a Dean Dimebag all with emg 81's in the bridge and a 7 string B.C. Rich with passive pickups.

Now...about 3 months ago before I had my g9, whenever I would play on any dirty patch the signal would get very weak and sound like total crap but the clean patches would be sweet and crisp like always, so I thought my gnx 3k was just getting old and going down the drain. Well I got my g9.2tt a, nd the same thing kept happening, so I dug out my g2.1u and the same thing happened. No matter what I do it always happens.

I changed batteries, cables, rooms, pickups, every arrangement possible and the same thing.

Guys, I'm at my wits end and going crazy trying to figure this out. I feel like a caveman on a quest for fire.

Somebody somewhere HAS to have the solution for this mystery. If I dont get help soon I think I'm gonna end up like Michael Douglas in the movie "Falling Down". For those who know what I'm talking about thats exactly how I'm starting to feel, for those who dont, you gotta see that movie. Right now I'm in the car on the freeway and the bee is about to sting me any minute now lol.

I'll wait a while for a few responses and then I'm gonna have to pack my dufflebag and move on to the next forum. I feel like Bill Bixby in the old tv series "The Incredible Hulk" or David Carridine i "Kung Fu" or Michael Landon in "Highway To Heaven". Yeah yeah yeah I'm 41 lol.

Thanks to all who read this weather you responded or not.

6tring

[6tring]

Wow....Seriously? Nobody ever came across this problem? I suppose, it is very strange and unique.

[Enzo]

I njever worry about whether someone else has had a problem, I believe in just solving it. We could even find out that two completely different things can cause a problem that sounds the same.

You get the same problem through three different effect units, and with different guitars, right? What are you listening to all this through? What happens if you plug straight into whatever it is? Can you play through some other amp with these effect units?

[6tring]

I play through headphones (3) most of the time, monitor speakers and a 4x12 cabinet and still the phenomenon continues.

Its just so weird that everything does it, and what happened 3 months ago to cause it.

I'm really getting to the point of a nervous breakdown.

[Brad1]

Can we assume that you tried to tweak all those effects in manual mode to balance the pre-section with the output gain ...to be sure it isn't just poorly set presets causing the unbalance of volume between clean and dirty?

Brad1

[Steve Conner]

I think your problem is that your guitar rig is too metal. You need to sell everything, get a Telecaster and a Fender Champ, remove any nose or eyebrow rings you might have, and grow a Billy Gibbons beard. That might save you from going postal.

Your explanation of the problem is so confusing that I probably can't be of any more assistance. (how can you possibly have 3 headphones? They only come in pairs)

What are you using for an amplifier to drive your speakers? And the headphones, do those effects boxes have headphone outputs?

Did anyone recently build a radio station next door?

Falling Down was a fairly good movie.

[Brad1]

Did you take at least one of your effects boxes and intialize it to factory settings to see if anything changes? That should presumably wipe out misadjusted preset settings, if any.

Brad1

[6tring]

Ya Brad I did. I saved all of my user presets to my pc and then did a factory reset with no avail.

[Mark Hammer]

What might be helpful in this instance, if you are able to do it, is to provide a soundclip of the rig working well, and working what sounds poorly to your ears. Some problems can be hard to describe in verbal terms that click right away with others. Lets try the aural route for a bit.

[6tring]

Steve, I know, this whole thing is confusing.

No piercings either. And I unplugged all electronics in the house with no change.

Yes on the headphone outlets. All three units are equipped with em'.

I just use my mfx processors with the output jacks connected to monitor speakers, straight to the cabinet and through the effects loop.

I've been doing it all these ways since forever. Like I said it just started about 3 months ago and only on the dirty channels.

The radio station is what I'm kinda leaning towards. Not the station of course but some kinda outside interference. BUT WHY ON THE DIRTY CHANNELS ONLY?

AAARRRGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

Ahh, that felt good.

I really do appreciate all of your responses and thank you all very, very much. I cant think of anything else to do. So I'm gonna download guitar rig 4 trial from Native Instruments and see what happens when I play on a dirty channel with that. What do you guys think about that?

Thanks a million

6tring

[6tring]

Hi Mark. I get what your saying but let me try to explain it this way. I dont know if you have or have had in the past, an active pickup. Ya know when the battery starts going bad and the signal becomes weak, well thats what it sounds like is happening but it does it with passive pickups to. I'll plug in and everything will sound sweet and then after about 10 min. of playing it starts sounding weaker and weaker like power is being sucked out but then I'll go to a clean channel and its perfect. With all 3 units. That is whats so baffeling about it. Its not batteries, I plugged into numerous outlets with everything in the house unplugged so its not an outlet ya know.

[6tring]

Is there anything I could buy like some kinda power booster of sort without blowing up my units?

What do you guys think about that?

[Mark Hammer]

What has not been describd yet (or possibly tried) is plugging the guitar into your processor boxes with some sort of pedal in between.

If, let's say, you stick any other single-effect stompbox between your guitar and any of these various digital units, is the problem still there?

[sean k]

Well, I think you may have a malfunctioning power supply capacitor somewhere in there that, once it heats up, is unable to hold a charge.

Are the clean channels digitally processed or are they bypass'd?

I suppose the thing is that if it were a digital problem it'd be obviously digital like but it seems you have an analog problem either before or after the processing and it sounds suspiciously like a capacitor thats lost its ability to hold a charge. Maybe you had a power surge three months ago and it knocked a few caps heads off, over voltaged them briefly, and they're alright until they fully charge then they decide they're broken and start failing.

[6tring]

Hi Sean, I dont think that would be the case at all because the problem is in 3 different units using 3 different power supplies. Thats one thing I always did and will continue to do is use each power supply that came with each unit. I was using the digitech gnx 3k all the time when it started so I thought that was the problem and then my zoom g9.2tt arrives and problem continues so I dig out the zoom g2.1u and the problem was still there and moving to different outlets through out the house it never went away.