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Electrical issues? Anyone had this before?


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Ahoy there, Recording Forum! :wave:

 

I have an issue which is driving me to the point of utter desperation - I'm quite frankly at the end of my wits and so far managed to avoid a full nervous breakdown... at least long enough to post about it first and see if anyone can help or knows a bit more than I do...

 

Backstory:

 

I get hum. Really bad hum on all my guitars (and bass). The noise is so bad it makes me want to stick an icepick through my eardrum...

 

But this is the interesting part: I did not use to get hum. On any guitar (or the bass).

 

I moved to a new apartment in September of last year and until two months ago, everything was sweet. No buzz, good sound quality.

 

So two months ago, I noticed a drastic change in the tone of the guitars (and bass). At first I was not 100% aware of the bad buzz because I was monitoring at low levels without any gain. However, the lack of clarity in the instrument was obvious instantly.

 

So then I turn up the gain a bit (just enough to get a decent signal, hitting -12 db) and rise my monitor levels and I can hear this awful buzz. I thought maybe the ground cable on my guitar snapped, because if I touched any part of metal, the buzzing stopped.

 

I'll try to cut a long story short: I checked the guitar, I checked the cabling, I replaced the guitar, I replaced all the cables (guitar cables, audio interface cables), even tried a diferent audio interface, different guitars... all buzz horribly. If I try to add even the slighest bit of distortion to the guitar via an amp sim, the sound is unusable.

 

So - I suspect something is going on with the ground (not sure it can be a ground loop as everything is hooked up to the same power strip). What kills me, is that this starting happening overnight...

 

I ran a spectrum analyser on the recorded sound of the hum, and it peaks at 54hz. I live in Europe, so I presume that's the electrical current interfering with my guitar signal.

 

Has this ever happened to anyone? Does anyone know how to fix it?

 

At first I thought it was my preamp (I even posted a thread about it here) - and after some trial and error, I noticed everything I plug into the wall sockets is affected. I tried my neighbors house and the same thing happened - I'm starting to think something happened to the building...?

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I'm considering now selling all my gear and just shooting myself as I can't find any solutions... :(

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Flourescent or incandescent light circiuts on the same path as electronic guitar gear is the wrong answer. So is pretty much any other load being on the same circuit, like refrigerator, heater, dimmer switches, etc...sounds like a ground fault on your electrical lines could also be at issue. Get a circuit tester for ac receptacles, H.D. has it for about $5.00, find out if there is proper grounding in the building. If not, you will need to hire an electrician to double up the grounds...sounds like a combination of dirty unregulated voltage, and possibly loose or inadequate grounding in your electrical wiring. Adding a
line voltage regulator
in front of all your gear first is a very effective way of dealing with dirty and unstable power.

 

Hey man, thanks a lot for the reply! :)

 

I kept thinking it might be a power issue at my place, but since I posted my original message, I went down to a local audio shop near where I work with my guitar as I wanted to rule out the guitar being the issue (even though it started happening on all my guitars at the same time).

 

Unfortunately, it buzzed like mad - at this stage I feel like I am going crazy because the guitars did not use to do this! It also had this strange, almost phasey noise in the shop where I tried it... I can't really describe it very well, but the guitar did not sound good.

 

Is there anyway something has gotten into the guitar? Some sort of charge that is residing in the pickups or circuitry? I can't for the life of me begin to understand how these guitars that did not make a noise in the past suddenly become buzzing machines... :confused:

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Hire an electrician to have your studio its own circuit breaker and ground. And yes, using a line voltage regulator can help immensely. Have everything coming out the same electrical outlet can help. And there's a number of things that you can look into besides the Ebtech Hum Elminator which might help you out as well.

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60hz ground loops can appear almost anywhere, and like I said, even just a light circuit on the same path {or from shining into a guitar from overhead} as a pickup can add noise. Single coils are especially susceptable. Perhaps you could dig into your guitars a bit, and with a meter check for all the usual suspects, broken or cold solder joints, lifted grounds, open unsheilded uncapped points of transmission, poor or non-existant cavity sheilding and grounding,etc...I kinda think it's not the guitars though, because as you referenced, they were clean before you moved...and it could be static electricity too, playing while barefoot or in socks while standing on carpet can generate enough static electricity to cause a ground loop....The combination between properly sheilding and grounding all you guitars, a line voltage regulator and a ground loop lifter such as a Ebtech Hum Eliminator will certainly bring the silence back. You just need to figure out where the loops are and what's causing them, once you do, the rest is easy...

and don't off yourself until you've at least finished your first record...
and fixed all your ground loops
.
:D

Howabout that, my member just grew to senior size! only took me ten years to do it!....

 

Hey Radman - I really appreciate your advice! I won't off myself just yet... ;)

 

You know, I do live in a city where there's a lot of static electricity. In fact, barely a day goes by that I don't receive an eletrical shock from touching metal (mostly at work though).

 

Last night I was pondering about it, because now all 3 guitars buzz wherever I take them, not just at home - so based on that, everyone keeps telling me "It's the guitars that have a problem"...

 

Why did it happen to all of them at the same time? Perhaps they built some sort of static charge that I seem to be unable to discharge? The thing is, I woulnd't have a clue on how to discharge static from a guitar (that's taking into consideration if this scenario is even possible!!!).

 

I'm taking the guitars to a luthier that has a really good rep and he builds pickups and everything, so he's bound to have seen some weird stuff like this before. I'm crossing my fingers! If I find a solution, I'll be sure to share it here... after feeling such deep desperation at the fact that everything sounds "wrong" I can't imagine having to put another fellow musician through that...

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Hire an electrician to have your studio its own circuit breaker and ground. And yes, using a line voltage regulator can help immensely. Have everything coming out the same electrical outlet can help. And there's a number of things that you can look into besides the Ebtech Hum Elminator which might help you out as well.

 

Hey man, thanks. :) I'm going to try to figure out why ALL my guitars are humming first and if I can get them fixed and then think about throwing more money at more electrical gear. Money's tight at the moment and in 8 years I never had this problem before...

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I know you said that they all started humming at once. Have you tried them through different amps as well as different places, or is it just the same amp? Just curious. Just working toward isolating the problem here. At any rate, that is odd that they all start humming at once in different places.

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I can tell you that most people with a technical background will ignore threads like yours because you've left out so much information. You don't ever even tell anyone what you're plugging these guitars into.

 

These problems are always detective work, you must eliminate, or substitube, every device in your signal chain to determine root cause.

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