Hi folks. Looking for a bit of help.

I bought a Peavey Bandit 112 a while back and there's a problem with it that's starting to get on my nerves: it hisses ridiculously loud!

The hissing (more like a "white noise" sort of sound) can be heard whether a guitar is plugged in or not, and is (obviously) far louder when using higher gain settings. To be honest I was willing to just deal with it when playing at home with the volume relatively low, but turning the post gain to even notch number 1 produces way more hiss than is acceptable, so you can imagine what it'd be like in a rehearsal situation.

One thing that's strange, though, I found an unanswered thread on another forum from a guy with likely the same problem, who mentioned how plugging a pedal (or anything for that matter) into the effects loop's RETURN jack seems to completely eliminate this noise. I tested this on my amp and it seems to be the case. Not sure of the relevance, but thought it could be helpful info.

Anyone have any ideas on how to remedy this shit? Or is this just the way it was "meant to be"? I didn't have this problem with my crappy old Marshall 30FX.

Cheers

I had a Peavey Bandit 112 in the past and I got the same problem without resolving it, so I put it in my closet and forget it there.... I don't know if it's a manufacture error or something but I never found any answer to that problem either .

I also had a Peavey Bandit 112 with the same problem and never figured out a solution. I don't recall whether using the effects loop had any impact on it, but imagine that I would have just always kept a pedal hooked up if it would fix things and I don't remember doing that. I only used the amp for playing at home at low volumes and it worked for me for that purpose at the time. I remember the post gain, reverb, and high tone knobs unsurprisingly had the biggest impact on the hiss.

The hiss disappears when something is plugged into the return jack only, as soon as anything is in the send jack it reappears, unfortunately.

I've seen people mention noise suppressors etc. I have no experience with such equipment, but I'd assume they wouldn't help with this particular problem.

Seems many people experience this with their Bandits, why it was never mentioned in any reviews I read is beyond me.

Maybe I'm just fussy.

Well it wasn't a huge problem for me since I was really into the wall of sound tremolo picking of black metal when I had the amp, and it worked well for that. The hissing was essentially drowned out by the constant notes. I agree though it is really strange not to have heard this in any reviews, I had assumed only mine had the problem.

Bought amps with hiss problems before, I think the problem is that there's always something happening in music stores. Staff playing music on the computer, monitors for sale, and that other guy playing with ridiculous amounts of gain.

Bought my friend's Vox amp a while ago to get some good clean sounds, never noticed the background noise because he lives on a main road.