Placement of the cyclops matters (at least for my rig it does). I had it sitting on the PS-100 and it causes a low frequency hum to come through the amp. I lift it off and the hum stops. All the cables are evidence audio solid core, so I don’t think it’d be a cabling issue.
He’s a link to a video in dropbox to demonstrate the hum (if the video doesn’t play, right click to get the video URL)
Hi @lakeside
This is an example of a great questions!
My guess would be the proximity causes a form of coupling. It sounds like power supply noise gets into the signal?
Regards
Dan
Hey Dan.
Changing where it’s on the surface of the PS-100 makes very little difference. In fact, I used to have it to the left of my Axe-FX and it was making the hum too, so it’s not PS-100 specific.
If I unplug it, it still makes the hum as well. On my rig, it’s only when I move the cyclops away from all other electronic devices does the hum go away.
I posted another short video demo …
Hi Lakeside,
Thanks so much again for the extremely helpful videos!
I have a hypothesis brewing –
I think this energy from the PS-100’s linear power supply getting coupled into the single ended cables.
If this is right you really only have two options:
Fancy testing this? I guess by moving the cables as far from the PS-100 as possible and keeping the Cyclops in place? Or you can get the tin foil out.
Regards,
Dan
Hi Dan,
I’d actually tried the tin foil a couple days ago and it made no difference, however, I hadn’t grounded the foil. How would I go about grounding the tin foil?
I won’t be able to test it for about a week (vacation!), but when I get back I’ll give it a go.
Alex
Hi Alex,
OK, do try bending the signal cables first as if this changes nothing then the shielding won’t work either.
I would try put the signal cables in a cable tidy/sleeve/conduit
put the cables inside then wrap it with an EMI or aluminium tape,
For example,
https://www.3m.co.uk/3M/en_GB/p/d/b00041317
The foil tape should connect to metal shell of one of the jack plugs that are grounded.
However, before all that effort, maybe picking a different location would be easier.
If don’t have a cyclops, so I cannot test this , but I should probably order one.
Regards,
Dan
Hi Dan.
Moving locations is not an option. I’ve got a dedicated circuit for my rig installed and it’s not a portable rig.
I’m determined to get to the bottom of this. I’ve got on order RF EMI Shielding Tape SHIELD WRAP™ Nickel-Copper (NI/CU) 2.000" and some Expandable Braided Sleeving. Both should arrive in about a week or so.
You can see that the cables are spaced quite far apart. Can I assume that I am to try to loom together the first 6 cables from the left side of the cyclops (not bothering with the remote or power cable). In that case the shielding wrap will not go all the way to the cable plugs, or is there something else you had in mind?
Alex
Hey Alex, yes, I think that makes sense: you want to shield the line level and guitar level carrying cables from any stray magnetic fields from the power station and associated cables.
I’m really curious to see how things go! Fingers crossed we see an improvement 
I wrapped the audio cables with tinned copper mesh, and then a sleeve, being mindful to ground out the copper mesh to at least one ground plug source.
I ran the test again, and it’s better, but there is still the low hum that only gets better if the cyclops is either lifted up higher from the PS-100 or bypassed all together. So, effectively, wrapping the cables didn’t fix it 
Video: Dropbox
Great work lakeside - it’s a work of art and physics! Glad you saw an improvement too 
but also sorry to hear that it is not a full solution.
Is it feasible to add a little bit of vertical distance between the Cyclops and the Power Station - this depends on your setup and how much room you have? I wonder if this is the only way to improve the situation?
I’m going to swap in a switch-track to see if I run into the same issues with it placed in the same location.
I’ve ran a test with the Switch-Track, and it’s much worse even! So… back to the original statement - physical proximity to other devices matters. Putting the cyclops on top of the PS is not ideal is the conclusion I’m making here.
Hi Lakeside,
That’s a very clear demo.! The noise is worse when it is directly above the power transformer - on the right hand side of the power station.
Just to clarify, you’re saying when you sub the Cyclops with the Switch-Track, the Switch-Trak noise pickup is worse? If so, that wouldn’t surprise me since I believe the entire Switch-Track housing is aluminum. The Cyclops housing is steel on the bottom and aluminum on top.
Basically, you’re running guitar signal through those boxes, so with any kind of high gain amp or preamp, any noise picked up from local power transformers will get amplified by the amps input gain stages the same as would happen if you put a pedal on top of the amp near the transformer.
We expected that some people would be putting these on top of rigs where that might be an issue. That’s partly why we put a remote switch function on the back (not to mention all of the rear panel connections required). When used, you can mount the Cyclops box elsewhere, or inside the rear of a rack rig, such as velcro’d to the side wall of the rack to get a significant reduction of field pickup. By the way, such a vertical mounting means would yield a pretty dramatic reduction in noise pickup.
Adding netic foil inside as you guys have already discussed, will attenuate that somewhat, as much as half actually, but not 100 percent. If you lay a guitar cable on top of an amp head near its power transformer you’ll get the same issue even though the cable is shielded. Transformer field annoyance is proportional to transformer size and proximity when exposed to sensitive signals, so you’ll still want to locate the unit away from transformers as far as reasonably possible.
As we always say, for every problem, there is a solution, often with an associated compromise. You’ve provided some great feedback though and that’s why we created this forum.
Please let us know about that first clarification.
Thanks.
Dave
Hi Dave. Yes, much worse noise with the switch-track. Check out the video to hear for yourself in Cyclops physical proximity to other devices matters - #12 by lakeside
And I can confirm, moving the cyclops to the back of my rig away from transformers and such is the solution. Same with the switch-track, if I move it things are fine.
The take away, which is the title of this thread, is ‘cyclops physical proximity to other devices matters’. Seems kind of obvious now of course.
