Hi,
I’ve always had serious noise problems at home. I’m trying again today to figure it out and wanted to share my results in the hope that someone can help figure it out.
I have several tube amps. I have several guitars with a variety of humbucker pickups. With any combination of guitar, pickup, and amp, I get beaucoup noise. Some days not too bad, but most days it is so bad that I cannot play without tonesucking noise suppression. I get very loud hum, buzz, and often shrieking feedback even at low volume and gain settings. The noise varies in intensity depending on which direction I face and how my guitar is oriented.
Here are my findings:
1. Shielding guitars with copper. I’ve done this carefully, checking my work with my multimeter. It doesn’t seem to make much difference in the guitars I’ve shielded.
2. Move my amp to a different circuit in the house. No difference.
3. Turned off all the breakers in my house, except one room. In that room I turned everything off except for my amp. No difference.
4. I took one guitar, cable, amp, speaker cable, cabinet, and Monster power filter to a location several miles from my home. Everything sounded fine there, no noise. Brought that rig home – all my noise was back.
5. If I use wireless instead of a cable, the noise seems a little less.
6. Only noise suppression pedals or rack gear seems to have any impact.
7. I sold one of my shielded guitars with Kinmans. For me it was noisy. The guy that bought it reported that the guitar was dead quiet.
My Monster power units say that my house ground wiring is OK.
From this, I conclude there is a strong source of EMI outside my house. Since the problem is outside my house, I can’t prevent it. So I’m trying to figure out how to shield myself from it.
For the remaining experiments, I chose one of my amps that was easy to get to. I'm sure it would be the same with my other amps. It is a 50w Marshall 1987XL plugged into a Monster power filter. I plugged in a good guitar cable and experimented with attaching different things.
7. Just plug the cable into a guitar. That causes the noise. Without the guitar, the amp and cable are quiet. The noise is adjustable with the guitar volume. Doesn’t matter what guitar.
8. I took a guitar jack and shorted the tip to the sleeve. When I plugged the cable into that, it was quiet.
From this, I conclude that the guitar is where the noise is getting in. It's not an amp or cable problem.
9. I took an S-D Alnico Pro II humbucker and wired it directly to the jack. Hot to tip, ground of the pickup and ground of the shielded pickup lead both going to sleeve. Result - tons of noise.
Now I conclude that my guitar wiring probably isn’t the problem, since I don’t even have a guitar or any controls in this experiment. Any theories about grounding in my guitars are weakened by this observation. My guitars are quiet in other locations, making me think the guitars aren’t the problem.
It appears to be the pickups picking up noise.
10. I built a small box and lined it with copper shielding. I tested it with my multimeter to make sure that all sections were connected and that it was properly grounded to the jack. I put the pickup in a plastic bag to make sure it wouldn’t make any electrical connections. I put the bag containing the pickup into the shielded box, completely shielding it on all sides. The only thing outside the shielded box was the jack and about an inch of the wires connected to the jack. When I plugged this in, I got the noise. The shielding didn’t seem to have any effect at all.
11. I put a pickup cover on the pickup. No change. While the cover was on, I wrapped the entire pickup in several layers of aluminum foil, and grounded the foil to the jack. No change – still noisy. I left the cover in place with all the aluminum foil and then wrapped the whole thing with a few yards of copper tape. Still noisy.
I conclude that the source of the EMI is outside my house and is so strong that I cannot effectively shield my pickups from it. Or perhaps copper and aluminum aren’t effective shields for this EMI. If I want my tone back, I need to move. Ugh!!!!
I considered shielding a room in my house. I used to work in secured facilities that were basically faraday cages. I’ve put more shielding around that pickup than would go into the walls of one of those secured areas and it didn’t help. Plus it is *really* expensive to do something like that.
Maybe EMI that strong is bad for people, as well as guitars?
Hopefully my logic or technique is wrong. Or there is something else to try. If you think it is difficult to convince your wife that one more amp or one more guitar is really necessary, try telling her you need to move to make all that expensive stuff sound right! Actually, based on my results I do not recommend you suggest that…
I’ve always had serious noise problems at home. I’m trying again today to figure it out and wanted to share my results in the hope that someone can help figure it out.
I have several tube amps. I have several guitars with a variety of humbucker pickups. With any combination of guitar, pickup, and amp, I get beaucoup noise. Some days not too bad, but most days it is so bad that I cannot play without tonesucking noise suppression. I get very loud hum, buzz, and often shrieking feedback even at low volume and gain settings. The noise varies in intensity depending on which direction I face and how my guitar is oriented.
Here are my findings:
1. Shielding guitars with copper. I’ve done this carefully, checking my work with my multimeter. It doesn’t seem to make much difference in the guitars I’ve shielded.
2. Move my amp to a different circuit in the house. No difference.
3. Turned off all the breakers in my house, except one room. In that room I turned everything off except for my amp. No difference.
4. I took one guitar, cable, amp, speaker cable, cabinet, and Monster power filter to a location several miles from my home. Everything sounded fine there, no noise. Brought that rig home – all my noise was back.
5. If I use wireless instead of a cable, the noise seems a little less.
6. Only noise suppression pedals or rack gear seems to have any impact.
7. I sold one of my shielded guitars with Kinmans. For me it was noisy. The guy that bought it reported that the guitar was dead quiet.
My Monster power units say that my house ground wiring is OK.
From this, I conclude there is a strong source of EMI outside my house. Since the problem is outside my house, I can’t prevent it. So I’m trying to figure out how to shield myself from it.
For the remaining experiments, I chose one of my amps that was easy to get to. I'm sure it would be the same with my other amps. It is a 50w Marshall 1987XL plugged into a Monster power filter. I plugged in a good guitar cable and experimented with attaching different things.
7. Just plug the cable into a guitar. That causes the noise. Without the guitar, the amp and cable are quiet. The noise is adjustable with the guitar volume. Doesn’t matter what guitar.
8. I took a guitar jack and shorted the tip to the sleeve. When I plugged the cable into that, it was quiet.
From this, I conclude that the guitar is where the noise is getting in. It's not an amp or cable problem.
9. I took an S-D Alnico Pro II humbucker and wired it directly to the jack. Hot to tip, ground of the pickup and ground of the shielded pickup lead both going to sleeve. Result - tons of noise.
Now I conclude that my guitar wiring probably isn’t the problem, since I don’t even have a guitar or any controls in this experiment. Any theories about grounding in my guitars are weakened by this observation. My guitars are quiet in other locations, making me think the guitars aren’t the problem.
It appears to be the pickups picking up noise.
10. I built a small box and lined it with copper shielding. I tested it with my multimeter to make sure that all sections were connected and that it was properly grounded to the jack. I put the pickup in a plastic bag to make sure it wouldn’t make any electrical connections. I put the bag containing the pickup into the shielded box, completely shielding it on all sides. The only thing outside the shielded box was the jack and about an inch of the wires connected to the jack. When I plugged this in, I got the noise. The shielding didn’t seem to have any effect at all.
11. I put a pickup cover on the pickup. No change. While the cover was on, I wrapped the entire pickup in several layers of aluminum foil, and grounded the foil to the jack. No change – still noisy. I left the cover in place with all the aluminum foil and then wrapped the whole thing with a few yards of copper tape. Still noisy.
I conclude that the source of the EMI is outside my house and is so strong that I cannot effectively shield my pickups from it. Or perhaps copper and aluminum aren’t effective shields for this EMI. If I want my tone back, I need to move. Ugh!!!!
I considered shielding a room in my house. I used to work in secured facilities that were basically faraday cages. I’ve put more shielding around that pickup than would go into the walls of one of those secured areas and it didn’t help. Plus it is *really* expensive to do something like that.
Maybe EMI that strong is bad for people, as well as guitars?
Hopefully my logic or technique is wrong. Or there is something else to try. If you think it is difficult to convince your wife that one more amp or one more guitar is really necessary, try telling her you need to move to make all that expensive stuff sound right! Actually, based on my results I do not recommend you suggest that…
