I recently bought a used Holy Grail reverb pedal which I really liked.
All of a sudden it's not working correctly.

I've tested to make sure my chords are good. The symptom now is when the pedal is in line, I get signal through it, but it is greatly reduced and weak. There is also a considerable amount of hum in the background.

The odd thing is when the pedal is engaged, it still operates. The reverb and "flerb" settings work just the way they should, only the signal sounds like shit and is weak (just as mentioned before)

Any ideas? I'm using the correct power supply that came with the pedal.
Could it be a bad switch throwing some extra resistance in there? I've got a multimeter that I am shamefully unskilled with so I need a point in the right direction.

Any ideas?

That's a damn noisy pedal in general. Can you run it on a new, fully-charged battery?

EHX Holy Grails are notoriously unreliable pedals - just ask honeyisfunny and various other people.

Hey,

thanks for the input so far. I have noticed the signal drops in normal operation and they were....negotiable. When I say signal drop I'm talking about over half and all bass is removed.

And the noise is not just some hum, it's huge. I've taken it apart and tested the resistance on all the points I can get to and they all read wide open.

Has anyone taken these apart before? I found there is a brown wire going directly from a lead on the input jack going straight to the output jack lead. When I wiggle it, sometimes it cuts in and out, but not always.

Also, I'm getting to the point with it now that no signal is coming through, off or on.

Anyone have any ideas what I should be looking for?
Thanks in advance.

mors08 wrote:Anyone have any ideas what I should be looking for?

A new reverb pedal.

An update,

I fixed the pedal. There was a bad wire connecting the input and output jacks. It was brown and I'm assuming was the connection straight un-effected sound.

Anyhow, the wire used in this pedal is very small, perhaps 22 guage? All I had to replace it is probably closer to 18, quite a bit larger. Are there any issues with resistance using lower guage wire along side higher guage?

Also, anyone got a favorite A/B Y pedal? I want two be able to run both amps at once, not switch between them.

any stereo pedal could do the trick. might be a reverb/delay or chorus.
lots of guys here use the boss tu-2 tuner, for example.

using 18 or 20 or 22 gauge wire isn't going to change anything at all. you're fine.

if you don't want to switch between amps, just want them both on all the time, then as mentioned you can use the two outputs of any stereo pedal or a pedal like the Boss TU2. if you don't have any pedal with two outs, you can use a Y-cable that splits your one signal into two.

as far as an A/B/Y, if you want to go that route, I have a Morley that does the job just fine. but I haven't used it in a while since I always have both amps on... i've just been using the two outs on the TU-2. one less pedal in the chain.

scott wrote:using 18 or 20 or 22 gauge wire isn't going to change anything at all. you're fine.

if you don't want to switch between amps, just want them both on all the time, then as mentioned you can use the two outputs of any stereo pedal or a pedal like the Boss TU2. if you don't have any pedal with two outs, you can use a Y-cable that splits your one signal into two.

as far as an A/B/Y, if you want to go that route, I have a Morley that does the job just fine. but I haven't used it in a while since I always have both amps on... i've just been using the two outs on the TU-2. one less pedal in the chain.

Re: a Y-cable, you will have to turn the pedals or the amps up more as it will weaken your signal. A powered A/B/Y should give you a full strength signal but you'll need a battery/AC adapter. I forget if the Morley's powered, all I remember is it's expensive and I sent it back.