Moog Music Forum

My LP rarely leaves the home studio, but occasionally I will take it out to an open mic jam with the boys, as happened this past week. Well, sadly it looks like my LP has STAGEFRIGHT.

Right away, when I powered it on at the gig, it just started acting strangely. It was drastically out of tune on every preset. When I would go to adjust a parameter, the LED's around the pots would randomly 'float' around. All in all, it was very unstable. It did seem to calm down a bit after about 30 min but by then the set was nearly over anyway. This is the second time something like this has happened after I brought it out to a gig.

Naturally, back at home everything works fine with the unit.

Have any other LP owners encountered a problem like this? Could this be a problem with the mains power? I was also using a Taurus III but it worked fine with no issues.

Im really scared to rely on it anymore for future live performances until I can be sure that it will be stable.

You are describing a common problem caused by the outlet being poorly grounded that the phatty is plugged into or the phatty is well grounded with a device in the audio chain that is not grounded, grounding itself through the phatty via the audio cable. Both cause the dancing light useless piece of crap syndrome.
I have not heard of a definitive hardware solution (ex. Plug your phatty into "this" device and it is grounded). If you live in a region of the world where ungrounded outlets is common, I'd contact Moog support. They may have some things you can try. If you live somewhere where outlets are usually grounded, try another outlet or try to plug the phatty into the same outlet as all the other devices in its audio chain.

It is an AC grounding issue. This is a well known problem with some Little Phattys. But not all units are sensitive to the same degree to this.
Make sure you have a properly grounded power outlet to plug your LP in. If your power outlet doesn't have a third ground hole, you're likely to experience trouble.

Excerpt from Amos of Moog Music in another thread about someone else having the exact same problem:

"In general it's safe to say the Voyager is definitely less sensitive to AC ground issues.
But, I think it's possible that most LP are less sensitive to AC ground issues that this one is."


Here's a link to the complete thread:

http://dev.moogmusic.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=9166

You can try plug the phatty into a voodoo lab "pedal power 2", it totally fix the grounding issues. ( it has a independent power input socket), I'm sure one of ur guitarist friend owns one, borrow from them and try it out! Hope this will work out for u!

Nuzayin wrote:You can try plug the phatty into a voodoo lab "pedal power 2", it totally fix the grounding issues. ( it has a independent power input socket), I'm sure one of ur guitarist friend owns one, borrow from them and try it out! Hope this will work out for u!

Wow, its really funny you mention this because I WAS plugged into the AC outlet from my Pedal Power 2. Actually I had the T3, another pedal and the LP all coming out of an outlet extender from the alt AC socket of my Voodoo Lab Pedal Power 2.

Of course if it had a lousy ground to begin with, im sure it cant work miracles. It seems that my unit is very sensitive to this problem. Probably compounded by the fact I live in South Florida (you can't really get a GOOD ground anywhere, the ocean is 8-15 feet beneath us).

This (the grounding bug) does sound like a logical explanation. However, im wondering if there is any sort of a service bulletin that has been issued on this? Im quite experienced with minor mods and soldering/electronics, is there any way to improve the internal grounding scheme? Maybe I will call Moog later this week...

At any rate, I plan on bringing one of those Lighted AC outlet testers the next time I play a gig there.