My modded guitar amp makes popping sounds under some circumstances


I have a Fender Mustang GT-40 guitar amp and I decided to try to mod it. I’m very new to this, so I’m learning a lot. For the mod, I connected the speaker output pins to a voltage divider circuit to bring the speaker level signal down to line level so I can go straight from the amp to FOH or an audio interface. I connected the line output to a 1/4” jack, and connected it to my audio interface (presonus studio 2/4C) and turned it on and it worked fine. The max signal I was reading on my audio interface was -12db, barely in the yellow. Then, I tried again with the exact same setup except this time my laptop was connected to my external monitor via hdmi. Now my audio interface was only getting a repetitive popping sound from my amp (maybe 5-8 times per second). When I unplugged my hdmi, it was back to normal. If I only unplugged the hdmi from the monitor (still plugged into laptop) then the popping stopped, but then if I touch the end of the hdmi cable to the metal frame of the monitor, it comes back again. Does anyone have an idea of what might be going on, or if this is a huge problem with my mod and I shouldn’t plug it into a sound board in this state? It works perfectly except for the weird hdmi thing. Here’s the circuit:

Image.jpeg

brokenchemist

I’m not sure if the image posted properly. The attenuation circuit is a passive attenuator with an “L” configuration. R1 is 25k and R2 is 1K. 

You’ll likely have better luck if you post this on TDPRI.com.

 

that said, why didn’t you just use the headphone jack to input to your presonus, rather than making the mod?

SOLVED

@bdgregory thanks for the suggestion, I'll check out that forum for the future!

I could use the headphone jack, but going from a stereo headphone jack to a balanced input is clunky and you have to separate the L and R signals. That's not too bad, but I also just wanted to start learning about electronics and amps so I took on this project.

I actually figured out the issue, though. Apparently the + and - pins for an amp signal are different than simply using + and GND for the audio interface (same with a FOH sound board after testing). So I just made two different switched outputs, one for line out which is attached to + and GND (just on the amp frame) and one for an 8 ohm speaker out attached to + and -.