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My FX65 Chorus pedal is putting out a solid whine sound when bypassed that I don’t remember from a few years ago when I bought it.

Things I’ve tried include disconnecting it from my OneSpot adapter and using a battery instead, as well as switching the cables out for my nicer shielded ones, but it’s still a problem, even when I hook it up with no other effects in the chain. Any ideas?

I guess caps can go bad after some time, and those DOD pedals are from the like mid '80s?

Is it only when bypassed?

Have you tried pouring beer on it?

Very basically first check the jacks and make sure nothing is loose or disconnected.

It looks so freaking beautiful.

Yeah, I apologize for posting a pic of the pedal instead of a video of the noise issue.
Anyway, I’m now not so sure this isn’t an issue with my power supply but this would mean a problem with my Deucetone Rat, which is much more expensive. Boo, but I can at least rig up a workaround.

Hm, the noise still persists and now I don’t know what the hell is going on except that the individual pedals are ok.

Ok, got it sorted by taking my board apart and putting it back together piece by piece. Kind of annoying that I still don’t know what the problem was but a huge relief to not have the noise going, especially with that new Tele-style build I did which was competing for volume with it.

Damn near overreacted and sold off a bunch of pedals after trying it with my old powered pedalboard to no improvement, glad I didn’t! Now I’m ready to put a Mick Ronson Crybaby in there somewhere.

One year later update: the issue was cables like these I made with bits from Amazon. So I can’t say I recommend DIY kits with these jacks, though I imagine the issue was the unshielded cable itself.

that oddly makes sense to me. maybe 2 years ago I got about 30 of those solder less 1/4" mono tips and figured I would try them out against brand-name switchcraft. economy ends, and then some "Amazon blue light specials" the Amazon ends literally fell apart. the economy and the switchcraft sound the same. the difference that I could immediately tell was the overall quality of the piece. I also did a bit of experiment with cable size. once again one of those "too good to be true" 100 ft. of green cable for like 10 bucks. it was junk, the braided wire was.... noisy? if that makes sense. I could bend the cable and I would hear static and all that I could figure it was somehow attributed to the outside wire wrap.

Most of my cables are made from the cheapest/smallest pancake plugs along with decent cable. They aren't durable, but they aren't getting moved ever, so they don't need to be. If I was actually patching in/out of things, I wouldn't use them, but for plumbing in a pedalboard and leaving, then yeah, they're fine.

There are more than a few where the shielding/grounding was a bit clumsy and I expected issues, but I got away with it.

The only way I can imagine it being noisy is either it's unshielded, or the shield/core are soldered to the wrong parts, meaning that the shield is carrying your signal, or that the shield isn't fully insulated from the core (very possible on very cheap cable, I suppose). Unless there's something else I'm missing.

But anyway. When I make cables I'm usually assuming that one in twenty won't work because of gremlins, which is sort of priced in compared to having them made for me by a factory/custom order. I seem to have got away with it, though, and mine all seem fairly solid.