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Original message:1246 days 4 hours 27 minutes ago

Member: Captain Fantastic

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Playing clubs still kids? Yeah man, many of us have, or are currently, circling the club circuit in our locale fighting the uphill, frustrating battle with 60 cycle hum. Our chance at victory, speculative at best...unless

You use batteries in all of your stomp boxes, play a guitar with hum cancelling pickups like a Les Paul or Paul Reed Smith, perhaps an Ibanez with Duncan Trembuckers? I was in the habit of bringing my '62 Telecaster to all of my rock engagements, complete with a hotrodded Twin� (you like that?), and a pedal board from the noisiest part of Hades. Then I started using my classic T Tom Anderson with hum cancelling single coil pickups and batteries in the boxes and it took care of a great deal of noise. Whatever, I probably just Q-tipped my ears on the nights when the hum was like an angry hive. Mmmm, ear wax.

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I enjoy skinny skiing, heckling figure skaters, flamenco guitar, the blue stuff you put your combs in, good drummers, focaccia bread and coffee out of a french press

Reply:993 days 5 hours 26 minutes ago
Member: jttrussler

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honestly greg, who doesn't love the hum? doesn't it just make you think of the heaviest most dopest rock gig. don't you think it just kinda makes you think sweet...just i just totally lost my train of though. but point is please do get rid of the hum, but at the same time it can be totally sick cause it is so 100% rock n roll.

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Reply:993 days 4 hours 59 minutes ago
Member: Captain Fantastic

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I think I hear bubbles. Is that smoke coming from beneath the door. Trussler! You promised you wouldn't! I'm tellin'

I guess I can't tell if you kidding or not. If the 60 cycle is louder than the chubby chicks libido, there's a problem. When I saw King's X, both Doug and Ty were playing through fairly lengthy signal chains and not a murmur between tunes.

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I enjoy skinny skiing, heckling figure skaters, flamenco guitar, the blue stuff you put your combs in, good drummers, focaccia bread and coffee out of a french press

Reply:992 days 6 hours 5 minutes ago
Member: jttrussler

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I think I was kidding. The hum bugs me. When we played on the quad last year in spring for the contemp show (although it was a miserable show already), the volume we were playing at didn't really help the situation. plus penty of other times. then again there's no problem if maybe a group of fat chicks shows up.

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Reply:901 days 11 hours 42 minutes ago
Member: Joe Chaney

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the hum is the best, gives it the live feel y'know, music is so refined these days, its just one of those things, dont bother fighting it, just live with it, if i could choose to have it, i would

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Reply:991 days 15 hours 26 minutes ago
Member: ibzRG

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Hum bugs me too. I tonally like single coils and I like humbuckers too, but I'm a humbucker guy because of the hum.

One part of the hum is the single coils.
The other part is static. I found that NOT having the bridge ground wire connected at all keeps my signal cleaner. That is of course provided the power plug ground is good. Apparently the strings act as antennas and pick up more noise that they channel onto my signal when I take my hands off them. Quite unpleasant.

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Reply:921 days 13 hours 49 minutes ago
Member: thefunkyone

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Run your own power distro and make sure everything is grounded. No more hum.

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Reply:917 days 13 hours 26 minutes ago
Member: awaywardson

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my rig is pretty quiet for the most part. I don't really change how I hook anything up, but it seems like some places we play have "dirty electricity". not only does my amp have a hum, but so does our P.A. This one place we play is awful. If I stand and face the crowd I get a HUGE BUZZ in my amp, but if I turn 90 degrees and face the drummer and bassist, it completely goes away 100%...

Reply:917 days 12 hours 17 minutes ago
Member: ibzRG

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Something interferes badly with your pickups and it is either behind the stage or in front of it...

My bedroom is like that most of the time.

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Reply:917 days 24 minutes ago
Member: Zombre

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As long as I use NO FX and avoid my ESP 7str, heh my rig is pretty consistently quiet. Except for my fretless strat too I guess..

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Reply:916 days 20 hours 43 minutes ago
Member: Reaper

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I used to get hums that is until I bought me that Roctron Hush Super C that has a cool little gate threshhold that blocks out any noise that comes from any of your equipment and a nice VHT G-2502-S power amp that I can just turn up crazy loud as apposed to setting my output too loud and distorting my sound...

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Reply:910 days 12 hours 21 minutes ago
Member: Hey Heidi Rae

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i had trouble with that too, until i got a noise suppressor. i use a boss ns-2. it works great....no more annoying hum.

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Reply:910 days 8 hours 52 minutes ago
Member: Zimo

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I've also got a Boss NS-2 and it works great. I also use hum canceling strat replacements from Dimarzio and those pretty much clear up most of the hum. They're low output though so that might be a factor as well.

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Reply:900 days 22 hours 35 minutes ago
Member: Hobo

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I don't use anything because usually i dont have my amp turned up too loud, but lately my band has been practicing loud, and in the bits i aint playing anything i get some feedback. I bought a behringer noise reducer (hey, im broke, behringer is a poor mans boss) and yea it works ok, but with high notes like when im soloing they have hardley any sustain, like bending a 15 on the high e, and it fades away pretty much straight away....

I was wondering if this happens with all noise reducers or if its just with my behringer one, and whether i should invest in a boss noise reducer....or a. similiar trustworthy brand.

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Reply:899 days 21 hours 5 minutes ago
Member: ibzRG

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Maybe you can try lowering the threshold.

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Reply:893 days 16 hours 18 minutes ago
Member: johnny cox

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I am really not that good at the technical part of gigging. The one thing that works for me is to have the master volume on my amp or PA turned down and to turn up the channel volumes more. It does not get rid of the humm completely but does reduce it.

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Plug in, turn up and spank the plank

Reply:881 days 17 hours 32 minutes ago
Member: Buck

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I had the hum trouble with a Tele too until I shielded the guitar. This is something commonly overlooked by alot of single coil players. It requires very little modification...I bought a piece of shielding material off Ebay designed to fit under the pickguard then bought some shielding tape from Stewart Macdonald and did the body cavity. Shielding a Tele is much easier than a Strat but if you wanna know how, go to http://www.guitarnuts.com and they'll tell you exactly how.

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Reply:868 days 1 hours 50 minutes ago
Member: mrkmas

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I would try to run the guitar directly into the amp first, to see if there is hum or not(maybe not to the extent written about originally) then you can narrow down the specific piece(s) of equipment that may be the culprit. Make sure the bridge is grounded, the soddering job is clean(everything is attached, and grounded, and nothing is rubbing. MAke sure the clubs have lighting that makes your equipment happy.(fluorescent light srips in ceilings are a real pain, and can single handidly cause you tonal misfortune.) Make sure the amp is grounded, and there are no scratchy pots on anything(includes pedals, guitars, amps). I know some of this is repeated, but just trying to say everything that comes to mind. Also make sure the cables are all in good shape. I use planet waves, but i have heard good things about george L's. PLanet waves have treated me very good, and i ever had trouble with them. Also, make sure the hum isnt a byproduct of the pedals(power supply).

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Reply:857 days 43 minutes ago
Member: jg76aries

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I was going to suggest, (until I saw that some of you have found it) that a noise gate (or noise suppressor) is a good thing to have on hand. Most MultiFX units have them built-in, but you can get them separately for your pedalboard. I've been pretty fortunate so far as to not have to deal with this alot. Sometimes excessive hum can be caused by the lighting rig being on the same circuit as the equipment. It just depends on the venue.

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Reply:856 days 23 hours 37 minutes ago
Member: shanejohnson2002

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Here's my secrets:

1) proper grounding - all guitars must be properly grounded and shielded.

2) proper isolation - any rack equipment must be isolated from the rack itself to prevent any kind of ground contamination

3) a good power supply - Monster Pro 2500 is the best I've heard so far (i witnessed a side-by-side test with the old standard Furman PL-8+ and the Monster owned it.) The $9 surge protectors from Wal Mart just won't do.

4) good cables - Monster cables. I don't know why I didn't buy them before I did. They cost a little extra but the advantage is you can replace them any time for free, because they have a lifetime warranty. You basically pay 50 bucks for a cable you'll use your whole life. I didn't know how noisy my rig was until I switched. Unbelievable.

Seriously, the cables and power supply make the biggest difference.

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Reply:848 days 13 hours 55 minutes ago
Member: Xarkzila

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One thing I haven't seen mentioned is the length of your guitar cable. Electronic fact! Your guitar cable is a two wire cable and there is no way around this. For those who think "balancing" it will make a difference, it will not. Your guitar does not have a balancing circuit, so cannot be balanced. Because of this unbalanced 2 wire line, there is a limit on the length of your cable before things start breaking down. You may not hear it clearly, but it's happening. After 15', you begin to lose highs and the amount of noise picked up by your cable increases exponentially. More shielding doesn't help, because there's no balancing circuit to eliminate random noise picked up by the cable. Without going into techincal explanations, keep your guitar cable under 15', or none of the other steps are going to help all that much.

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Reply:848 days 10 hours 9 minutes ago
Member: duane

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"keep your guitar cable under 15', or none of the other steps are going to help all that much"..

Yes but, also remember.... for every effect you run you are adding x meters of "pseudo" cable. There is a built in resistance between the input and the output of the effect so you may think it is an additional 6 in of cable but really it's more when you account for the circuit in the effect itself.

Reply:848 days 9 hours 5 minutes ago
Member: Xarkzila

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Good point! Every connection you make provides an avenue for noise to enter the line. The more connections, the more the noise can increase.

I forgot about that, (but then I'm an acoustic player so everything I record is mic'd and I don't have cables to worry about.) In the studio we limit guitar cables to 5' and try to avoid stomp boxes. Sometimes you can't, but we have a fully balanced system with isolated grounds. All signals are balanced immediately after any user supplied effects, if going direct. We always record a direct, clean, signal to start with, even if micing an amp or taking something direct from an effects unit. This gives us a pure guitar performance that we can then "reamp" to control the possibility of noise leakage.

When we have a client that brings in gear that hums and crackles, but says, "This doesn't happen at home," we know he's full of it. It's his gear and not ours and we can usually pinpoint exactly what it is that's causing the problem.

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"The music industry is a cruel and shallow money trench. A long plastic hallway where theives and pimps run free and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side..."
http://www.cleargravy.com

Reply:843 days 21 hours 49 minutes ago
Member: Mike D.

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I think the thing that helps most is the humbuckers (duuuuh) and the guitar. You can get two single coils and the cheaper one will screech like a dieing cat. Also, there is a difference between overdrive and distortion, one fact being that one has less mids and less humming *cough*distortion*cough*

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Reply:839 days 22 hours 34 minutes ago
Member: Mike D.

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I just looked at a Boss EQ pedal: gnar. It says it can take out any unwanted sound...

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Reply:839 days 15 hours 12 minutes ago
Member: BlueStratocaster

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Has anyone thought about 'hardwiring' they're effect pedals? I was wondering if using a soldered connection between my effects would help eliminate noise - thinking that the physical resistance between the cords and connectors would allow more noise than a soldered one. I'm sure it would void the warrant, but has anyone tried it?

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Reply:839 days 14 hours 56 minutes ago
Member: Atc_Gtr

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There is complete solutions to hum!

1)Ebtech's ground and guitar hum eliminators eliminate the hum comes from guitar and ground without effecting your tone and pure signal !

2)Lots of cables like George L's doesn't cause hum.Use quality cable.

3)Use true bypass and true isolated =)) pedals.

4)Completely isolate your guitar's wires.

5)If there is still hum you can always use " Electro-Harmonix Hum Debugger " that alters tone a little but saves you completely from hum and hiss.It is very good product for any style.

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