What is it with all these noisy high gain circuits I'm building?
Just finished a BE-OD (pcb), a Sovereign (vero), a BSIAB2 (pcb), and a None More Black (vero with trimmers, and an etch with fixed resistors), and of the four of these, only the Sovereign's noise floor is acceptable - ie, a noise floor that isn't at the same level of the distorted signal.
In all fairness, I compared them to my TS-7, and the sovereign is about the same, but the others are ridiculously loud. My Boneyard is near silent. I'm running these off a Joyo JMP-1 battery power supply, so I don't think it's a dirty house power issue. Bypass to the amp (some crappy little squier practice amp) is fine.
Just tried a Klon buffer in front of the BE-OD, and now it's usable. The noise still goes up substantially with increased gain. No difference with the Sovereign. Any suggestions?
Sometimes that is the nature of the beast with high gain circuits. Have you tried shielding your wires? That normally helps a bit.
I've jumpered the chargepump sockets (removing the IC) and combined with the klon buffer it's actually acceptable now.
I've tried the builds with the usual suspects - 7660s, tc and max1044 and none of them helped. Jumpering was the only thing I was happy with.
maybe try a LT1054. its more pricey, but I had good experiences with it. don't forget that the LT1054 does not need Vb connected to pin 8 like the 7660 and 1044. if you try to use it, please check the datasheet as I'm not entirely sure it's pin 8...