Spectra-Drive Woes

[Wfrance3]

Need a little help if there’s some out there…
I have a TC Electronics Spectra-Drive that started getting noisy a couple days ago. There’s a squeal (especially) from the tone prints. I bought it used, here actually, so I don’t know how old it is exactly, but it doesn’t look too old…. Turning the tone print effect down makes it quieter. The Spectra-Drive Is being fed by an isolated power supply. All I have on my board is the Spectra-Drive, a Thumpinator, a Broughton LPF, and a tuner. I played with changing around the tone prints, some are quieter than others, but anything I do, the squeal remains. I took the Spectra-Drive off the board to try it by itself as an experiment. I fed it with a one spot connected to nothing else, and used a different instrument cable for my passive p bass and different patch cable between my amp and the pedal. In fact I tried a few different cables just to be thorough. Weird thing is it was dead quiet a couple days ago. I know electronics carp out from time to time. Is that what’s going on here? Is it repairable? Has this happened to anyone else?
Thanks for reading my post, anything you can tell me would be appreciated.

 

[PhatBasstard]

I'm on my second one (foolishly sold the first) with no issues.
Have you tried a firmware update?

 

[Aloe]

spectracomp indeed can be noisy, turn it off to be sure.

 

[Wfrance3]

I'm on my second one (foolishly sold the first) with no issues.
Have you tried a firmware update?

I tried to locate a firmware update and had no luck locating one. If anyone is aware of where to download a link would be much appreciated!!
I feel like my pedal has something wrong with it, because the trouble I've been describing just started recently. Have held onto the pedal and am up for trying a firmware update if there is one out there...

 

[Wfrance3]

Update, and here's some not-so-obvious trouble shooting...
I went at it one more time and found that getting a whole new one-spot from my stash was key. It's not resolved by any means, but I got slightly improved results by using the SD with my amp and yet another power supply was key.
Nothing wrong with my other power supply's that I was using by verification with other pedals...
Sooo... I think my SD may be toast. It behaved decently ok under the conditions described, but the tone print section seems shot. With the tone print foot switch engaged, and both the drivce and compressor tone print knob at zero, a noticeable fuzz-like feedback is present. It gets worse as you add more of either tone print. - I know the drive tone print would do this normally, but I have the clean boost patch loaded and it didn't do this before...
Also, tried a few different compressor models. The low end is gone with every one I try. Disengaging the tone print switch brings back that nice TC "intelligent eq" section. It's not 100% quiet, but would be live-able enough. Would NOT be tolerable for recording.
Am going to hold onto the pedal for a while to see if I can come across a firmware update to try, or if I read something here that is a viable fix. At this point I'm in the TC Electronics fool me once shame on you camp...

 

[PhatBasstard]

I tried to locate a firmware update and had no luck locating one. If anyone is aware of where to download a link would be much appreciated!!
I feel like my pedal has something wrong with it, because the trouble I've been describing just started recently. Have held onto the pedal and am up for trying a firmware update if there is one out there...

Its been a couple years, but the firmware update was on the TC site somewhere.

 

[Wfrance3]

I tried to find it and didn’t locate anything short of the reference manual, product images, and the tone print software. - I looked through that as well. Seems like that would be a natural place fir TC to disseminate something like a firmware update. If it’s there, I missed it.

 

[Aloe]

IIRC there was no firmware update. it was widely rumored after the pedal was released, but I've never seen it has been released.

 

[PhatBasstard]

The updates for the Spectracomp and Tube Drive might work.

 

[patbass2692]

Late to the party. I'm looking at getting a Spectra Drive myself, and I've heard that the gain knob interacts with the distortion circuit in a unique way that produces fuzz. Look into that if you haven't moved on yet.

 

[Ajar Reynolds]

bumping this one, did anyone find a solution? mines been unuseably hissy as of about a month ago with no explanation

 

[TTPbass1]

As of today there's no firmware update available that I'm aware off. TC Electronic site has no software for this pedal. Mine is working ok, an as it has been said the spectra comp trends to be a bit noisy, so I just turn it off.