Dumb question about noise in guitars

[PFDarkside]

So... I've got 4 Strats. Two have noiseless pickups and two have hum cancelling pickups.

The ones with hum cancelling are "modern" style Strats with shielding paint and a ground screw in the cavity to tie into the remainder of the grounds. The ones with standard Single Coils are 62RI and 62RI style, no shielding I believe, however they do have RWRP middle pickups.

(Since I've moved I've noticed a lot more noise than before across the board)

For the vintage style Strats, when I switch from single pickups to the combined positions, the 60Hz is canceled (~75% of the noise) but there is still a noise floor apparent. Same goes for the hum cancelling guitars, no 60Hz hum, but there is a noise floor that I don't remember from before. (Maybe my new location is worse for noise? Maybe my guitar wiring/grounding is marginal and the old location wasn't as bad?)

How do I determine if this remaining noise is RFI or if it's noise in my power lines? I have a tough time determining if my new location is just bathed in RFI or if my new location has noisy wiring.

 

[Vasshu the humanoid typhoon]

Re: Dumb question about noise in guitars

How much noise when you turn down the volume knob?

 

[PFDarkside]

Re: Dumb question about noise in guitars

Great question! When I get home I'll check both Guitar plugged in and volume on 0 as well as Amp running with nothing plugged in.

 

[Lucy Diamond]

Re: Dumb question about noise in guitars

Do you have more, less or the same amount of dimmer switches in your new place.

Is it an apartment or a house?

Do you enjoy soy lattes and walks on the beach?

Are there any pedals in the chain?

And finally...

Is your rig on a shared circuit with anything deeply crazy like a refrigerator or your washer/ dryer?

 

[PFDarkside]

Re: Dumb question about noise in guitars

All fantastic questions.

Do you have more, less or the same amount of dimmer switches in your new place.
I will say more. But they should be turned off when I'm testing

Is it an apartment or a house?
Standalone house. Previous was a connected condo

Do you enjoy soy lattes and walks on the beach?
Anything less would be uncivilized

Are there any pedals in the chain?
For this purpose, no direct to Amp.

And finally...

Is your rig on a shared circuit with anything deeply crazy like a refrigerator or your washer/ dryer?
I don't think so, it should be a separate circuit in the basement. I will check though.

 

[PFDarkside]

Re: Dumb question about noise in guitars

Ok, lunch break update.

Test subjects:
2 "professional" amps (Mesa Road King, Splawn Quick Rod)
5 Guitars (Dimarzio Injectors, Lace Sensors, Duncan SSL-1/APS-1, Fender vintage style, Tele with Texas Specials)

Findings:
-Base level of hum is similar on both amps with no lead attached
-Base hum increases dramatically with a lead attached
-All 5 guitars with volume on 0 return Amp to noise floor without lead (guitar ground wiring is good)
-With guitar volume on full there is more noise than when on 0
-Standard singles are worse than noiseless models, even when 2 RWRP are selected

Basement and living room are on the same circuit, nothing crazy. (Furnace and sumps are on a different circuit) Luckily the dimmers are on the other "side" of the box. They didn't affect the noise.

I'll confirm the Humbucker guitars tonight (DMZ, SD & EMG) but I expect the same.

 

[IMENATOR]

Re: Dumb question about noise in guitars

Is your power circuit properly grounded? A cheap ground checker does the job, if not then you have for sure some 60hz noise in there, maybe not from pickups but maybe from instrument cable or electronics in the amp. As far as I have read shielding becomes a noise antenna when there is no proper ground connection. Once you get the ground connection working then I wound not think of any 60hz hum catched by your pickups and only RFI is left.

If you could only have a faraday cage to isolate from external signals


Edit: These claim to filter unwanted variations in the voltage. I would think if someone lends a power conditioning unit and you test it to compare that can also give you a clue of how much noise you can get rid related to power voltage. Propoer grounding comes first however.
http://www.ebtechaudio.com/humxdes.html

 

[thanaton]

Re: Dumb question about noise in guitars

If you turn your guitar from side to side, does the hum become better and worse? If so, you can probably find the source of the EMI based on which held angle and distance causes more or less noise.

 

[PFDarkside]

Re: Dumb question about noise in guitars

I'll be honest, poor grounding in the house was my first suspicion. Of course, those plug in checkers from Home Depot show no issue, but my house uses the conduit for ground which seems... interesting. I wonder if a dedicated ground to the outlet would help.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the inputs to guitar amps are self shorting to ground, right? So effectively my guitar on 0 and no lead plugged in are electrically equivalent, right?

 

[thanaton]

Re: Dumb question about noise in guitars

Yeah, I wouldn't blame the guitar in this case, I'd look at the environment.

 

[EDX]

Re: Dumb question about noise in guitars

you vol pot at 0 and the amp cordless sould be equivalent, it might be the cord tough....

but really, i don't trust so much on those home depot chekers, also i've seen some really atrocious installations where a stripped cable touches one of the distribution boxes, wich are conected to the metal bars inside the blocks of the house, and to the grounding itself, the ground from the house was charged so you couldn't touch the metal window frames and the wall without being shoked, on that one the home depot cheker showed the wall sokets were ok, and they kinda were, as the striped wire was on the light circuit but when i got my multimeter on the ground from soket to the floor it had the same difference in potential as the window frame had from the wall.

if your guitars are wll shielded there should be no problem, aso, if it's your electronics working as an anthena, there are some RFs that can pass through copper shieldings and can only be grounded with an aluminum shield, that's why some of those strat shielding kits have an aluminum foil sheet for the pickguard and copper foil for the cavity.

 

[PFDarkside]

Re: Dumb question about noise in guitars

Does doing this with the excess pickup wire contribute to noise? I'm a little unclear on how much the wiring contributes to noise as compared to the thousands of winds of pickup wire...

This is almost an exact clone of the wiring in my vintage style Strats.

 

[EDX]

Re: Dumb question about noise in guitars

well like that you should experiment some crosstalking (one wire inducting signal onto another, with pickups it will happen for example that when you're on the bridge pickup the neck and middle will be inducting some of their signal onto the bridge Pup conductor, therefore your output tone will not be the bridge pure but have some of the neck and middle mixed, twisting each pair of pickup conductors loosely will solve or get the crosstalking to a near to 0 level)

but definitely that wiring doesn't seems to being able to add further noise.

i would have wired the pickups grounds to a separate metal plate with a hole in it so it's held in place by the pots, but that's just personal preference and for sake of having quick acces to the pots and the minimal amount of wires soldered to them, so they're easier to replace and or tweak the electronics quickly, but as said that would be only preference as i like to tweak things once in a while just for tweaking them....

 

[PFDarkside]

Re: Dumb question about noise in guitars

Not a bad idea, I'll keep that in mind for the future.

(Also, now I see that the pic I grabbed is a single volume, single tone... That's not my guitar.)