Buzz when you remove your hand from guitar?

Ascension

Well-known member
Can't hear it at the house even in front of my computer monitor but at my Church it's an issue. Seeems to be a ground issue but can't find it. As long as I have contact with metal on the guitar it's quiet but if I remove from contact with the volume up it will buzz. Have a couple with this issue again can not hear it at home even at extreme gain directly in front on a computer monitor but at my Church with the bad wiring it is noticeable. Double checked all my grounds and resoldered any thing even the least bit ? nada so what am I chasing?
 
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Re: Buzz when you remove your hand from guitar?

You can’t fix this. Electrics have always been this way, to one degree or another, unless you have EMGs or a really well-shielded guitar.

Your church has dirty power. Keep your hand on the ground or roll off your volume every time you stop.
 
Re: Buzz when you remove your hand from guitar?

^^^what a great album name!; Church Of Dirty Power
 
Re: Buzz when you remove your hand from guitar?

Can't hear it at the house even in front of my computer monitor but at my Church it's an issue. Seeems to be a ground issue but can't find it. As long as I have contact with metal on the guitar it's quiet but if I remove from contact with the volume up it will buzz. Have a couple with this issue again can not hear it at home even at extreme gain directly in front on a computer monitor but at my Church with the bad wiring it is noticeable. Double checked all my grounds and resoldered any thing even the least bit ? nada so what am I chasing?
It's a textbook example of a faulty ground wiring. In most cases, the culprit is a, or several, solder cold joints, if not a severed ground lead. Time to put on your detective hat, I'm afraid. Good luck, and have fun while doing it!

/Peter
 
Re: Buzz when you remove your hand from guitar?

Wouldn’t a power conditioner help alleviate this issue? Or an ISP Decimator pedal or some sort of gate with a short threshold so its barely just on enough to quench noise?

Could try a different outlet with a hopefully quieter outlet, or a surge protecter as well.
 
Re: Buzz when you remove your hand from guitar?

Agree with others - dirty power.

Are your pedal board and amp coming off the same outlet/power strip?


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Re: Buzz when you remove your hand from guitar?

Agree with others - dirty power.

Are your pedal board and amp coming off the same outlet/power strip?


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Yep and have no choice on power. Old former Methodist Church building noisy as heck on the power but sadly common for an old church. Like I said all my Carvins and the PRS in particular are DEAD silent everything else to different degrees will buzz with the volume up when you are not touching something metal on the guitars except my old Proto Washburn with EMG's.
Building the Strat and chasing this was why I really started fighting it. Have to keep the guitar in 2 or 4 between songs anyway so fighting it all the time with that particular guitar. The Buzz is to loud to mute out at the board with a gate because the threshold is to high and kills me on swells by slamming open and closed abruptly.
 
Re: Buzz when you remove your hand from guitar?

Yep and have no choice on power. Old former Methodist Church building noisy as heck on the power but sadly common for an old church. Like I said all my Carvins and the PRS in particular are DEAD silent everything else to different degrees will buzz with the volume up when you are not touching something metal on the guitars except my old Proto Washburn with EMG's.
Building the Strat and chasing this was why I really started fighting it. Have to keep the guitar in 2 or 4 between songs anyway so fighting it all the time with that particular guitar. The Buzz is to loud to mute out at the board with a gate because the threshold is to high and kills me on swells by slamming open and closed abruptly.

Ok. Might be worth trying a HumX on either the amp or pedal board outlet - just so one is isolated.

https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/HumX--ebtech-hum-by-ground-loop-hum-exterminator

Doesn’t work in all situations, but this sounds like one where it will!

Best of luck.


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Re: Buzz when you remove your hand from guitar?

That buzz when you lift your hands off the strings means the magic smoke that's in your pickup is being slowly released.

You must do everything within your power to keep the magic smoke from being released, or lose your tone forever.
 
Re: Buzz when you remove your hand from guitar?

If you are a fan of laughably impractical solutions you can always alligator clip a pinky ring to some metal part of the guitar. As much as it pains me to say it, I have seen someone do this at a show before.
 
Re: Buzz when you remove your hand from guitar?

What's odd is that it only happens at the church.

All of my guitars do this, but it's not a horrible buzz. If it's that "normal" buzzing and you're just noticing it through your rig at church, you can shield the guitar (where you line every cavity with copper tape and then run wires to connect them and the pickups all together). I think it's called a "Faraday shield?" At any rate, if you do that, you won't get that buzz when you lift your hands off the strings, but it has a subtle effect on the tone. I prefer mine without shielding for that reason.
 
Re: Buzz when you remove your hand from guitar?

Get a ground tester tool, they are cheap, it will reveal if your AC power outlet is properly grounded or not. Also be sure your amp power chord has a ground pin, if you removed it or using an adapter to connect to non grounded AC outlet that can be part of the problem. Another thing could be your guitar wiring, be sure all wires that are meant to go to ground are actually going to the same physical spot, daisy chaining ground connections should be avoided.
 
Re: Buzz when you remove your hand from guitar?

I had this happen with a dead quiet (or so I thought) Les Paul that only buzzed in one building. Turns out it was two things. For one, the LP actually had a little buzz which was just a not so perfect ground connection from the bridge to the pots and jack. Undetectable at home or studio, but the second part was the live location had some kind of compressor on all the mixing desk channels and a limiter on the overall output which together cranked up any minute noise in between the music. I just put a ZNR noise gate at the front of my chain so when I’m not playing my signal is off.
 
Re: Buzz when you remove your hand from guitar?

What's odd is that it only happens at the church.

All of my guitars do this, but it's not a horrible buzz. If it's that "normal" buzzing and you're just noticing it through your rig at church, you can shield the guitar (where you line every cavity with copper tape and then run wires to connect them and the pickups all together). I think it's called a "Faraday shield?" At any rate, if you do that, you won't get that buzz when you lift your hands off the strings, but it has a subtle effect on the tone. I prefer mine without shielding for that reason.

The tonal effects of shielding can be avoided by only shielding the control cavity. If you want even more noise reduction, you can use copper tape to shield the inside of the pickup covers, making sure to leave a gap so that the tape doesn't make a closed loop. Keeping the loop open ensures that you won't be interfering with the eddy currents.
 
Re: Buzz when you remove your hand from guitar?

It’s usually from poor ground wiring. Also that high pitched buzz is from electrical field noise. Humbuckers only cancel magnetic field noise. So shielding can help. This is why EMGs are so quiet, along with the differential noise cancelation of the preamp.


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