View other reviews for this product:
MountAnDewMe « Works great at a price »
Published on 01/16/13 at 08:36 The Electro Harmonix hum debugger is truely a one trick pony. It has a quarter inch in and a quarter inch out and one toggle switch to select the amount of hum to remove. It is a true bypass pedal and has a good stomp switch. It can only be powered by an AC adapter and only by the one supplied with it so DO NOT LOOSE IT. I'm not sure how it achieves the effect but it does remove the hum associated with single coil pickups.
UTILIZATION
The manual was incredibly simple but the operation of the pedal is a no brainer, have hum turn it on, still have hum flip the switch to strong. It is meant to be used in your effects chain before the amp.
SOUND QUALITY
This can be used with a guitar or base that has noisy single coil pickups. I guess it will also help if you have a poor lighting situation that is causing your humbuckers to hum. I am impressed in how it does what it states but there is a price to be paid. A price that gets steeper as you increase the level of hum removal. I find that personaly if I am using a guitar with vintage single coil pickups it is because I am desiring a touch sensitive playing experience. I want all the subtle nuances to come through. Every pick stroke is important. All the effort put into putting dynamics into the piece is there for a reason. These are the things that become important to me in that situation. While the unit will remove the hum I also have found that it not only dulls the sound a bit but worse it takes away almost as much of the dynamics of the passage as it does the hum. Playing under the strong setting to me is pure hell and I would rather rely on a coil tapped humbucker than be stuck with the finest single coil having its soul robbed from it. While the loss is not as bad under the normal setting there is still hum present in the signal at this setting. It always returns to the question of is the hum even really that bad compaired to the feel being lost and the tone being dulled. I do not know if it is a bad design or just something that can not be seperated in life.
OVERALL OPINION
The thing I hate about this is it does work but in my opinion the price of quality and feel loss is too high. I may be a bit prissy when it comes to this so take it with a grain of salt. I know there are people that can not stand noise at any price. If you are old enough to remember it is very similar to the effect the old Dolby noise reduction would have on our cassette tapes. I would never buy this unit again and I honestly do not know what makes me keep it around. It does what it is billed to do but not the way that satisfies me. From what I see from other sources this has always been a love it or hate it unit. Definitly something that needs to be tried before its bought and of course there sre other ways around at least limiting the hum from a noisy axe and although they all require some effort I feel that effort is more than worth it.
UTILIZATION
The manual was incredibly simple but the operation of the pedal is a no brainer, have hum turn it on, still have hum flip the switch to strong. It is meant to be used in your effects chain before the amp.
SOUND QUALITY
This can be used with a guitar or base that has noisy single coil pickups. I guess it will also help if you have a poor lighting situation that is causing your humbuckers to hum. I am impressed in how it does what it states but there is a price to be paid. A price that gets steeper as you increase the level of hum removal. I find that personaly if I am using a guitar with vintage single coil pickups it is because I am desiring a touch sensitive playing experience. I want all the subtle nuances to come through. Every pick stroke is important. All the effort put into putting dynamics into the piece is there for a reason. These are the things that become important to me in that situation. While the unit will remove the hum I also have found that it not only dulls the sound a bit but worse it takes away almost as much of the dynamics of the passage as it does the hum. Playing under the strong setting to me is pure hell and I would rather rely on a coil tapped humbucker than be stuck with the finest single coil having its soul robbed from it. While the loss is not as bad under the normal setting there is still hum present in the signal at this setting. It always returns to the question of is the hum even really that bad compaired to the feel being lost and the tone being dulled. I do not know if it is a bad design or just something that can not be seperated in life.
OVERALL OPINION
The thing I hate about this is it does work but in my opinion the price of quality and feel loss is too high. I may be a bit prissy when it comes to this so take it with a grain of salt. I know there are people that can not stand noise at any price. If you are old enough to remember it is very similar to the effect the old Dolby noise reduction would have on our cassette tapes. I would never buy this unit again and I honestly do not know what makes me keep it around. It does what it is billed to do but not the way that satisfies me. From what I see from other sources this has always been a love it or hate it unit. Definitly something that needs to be tried before its bought and of course there sre other ways around at least limiting the hum from a noisy axe and although they all require some effort I feel that effort is more than worth it.