Members Sephiroth000 Posted November 23, 2002 Members Posted November 23, 2002 The second installment of my planned series..Please check out "Newb's guides : pickups and soldering" This is intended for the amature guitar players. Old hats and roadwarriors won't find much they don't already know..People with huge rack systems and tons of money won't either.. Noise and your amp: Not the feedback kind, but that which enters from the power mains. There are many ways this can happen. Crakels, pops, hums, and sometimes random volume drops are some of the symptoms of this problem. For the bedroom woodshedder, this can be an annoyence, espcially when trying to record on a small portable recorder. The first thing to do is to make sure non of your equipment is faulty itself. Sometimes this diagnosis is hard to do alone. If in doubt, take it to a specialist. Location: noise can be introduced by mearly having it in the wrong spot. Flourecnt lights and computers, cell phone, and light dimmers or touch sensitive lamps are notorious offenders. Turn these off or move your rig to a "quieter" spot..Don't ware your cell phome when playing, that subtile chirpig noise your hear isn't birds! Checking the plug. The 120AC wall plug is the first step. Make sure this is wired up properly and don't use an adapter for three prong outlets. Get it replaced. This helps you not get zapped if something should short. Use a power surge protecter. Don't spend more than 35$ for this. The expensive one's aren't really that much better. Stay away from surge protector that claim to filter noise. I haven't found a cheap one that does this well yet. You can buy a small plug with three lights that will tell you the state of your wall plug wiring. This is useful in finding out if everythings okey before you plug in. Take this with you if you go to a friends house.
Members Sephiroth000 Posted November 24, 2002 Author Members Posted November 24, 2002 Fighting: Now the tricks if the above fails..Here is a simple explanation. Noise in the power lines is small variences in voltge amount and ocellation. It can be found in Ac AND DC even though Dc current is one directional. This is the most apparet. Since All solid state equipment must change Ac to Dc in order to function on the circut board, we can see why this is important. Not all AC to Dc converters in a device properly filter this out or are too meager to handel large fluctuations. Coils: Coils are the bane of noise(an Ac entity). Simple adding a small loop or coil to the cable from the back of your amp to the wall plug can have a noticable effect. It won't impead the working 120Ac voltage but help "clean" it up some. Take an old am radio. open it up(this radio won't be able to be used again!). Locate a small rod, black with wire wrapped around the middle of it, sometimes sealed in wax. Pull this out. Strip the wax and wire. Now this rod is made of ferrite. It has magnetic feild propertrys yet not a magnet. It's commonly used as your am antenna(don't be fooled into thinking you steel rod on the top is the antenna for Am, Fm ONLY, and this goes for all radios except thoses requireing an external antenna). Use this rod by looping the cord fom your amp around it. A few turns will sufffice. On thicker wires this can be hard to do . Just try your best and use a ziptie or electrical tape.
Members Sephiroth000 Posted November 24, 2002 Author Members Posted November 24, 2002 You can also use this on the adapter wire for your effects boxes, ehatever they may be. Both on the wall plug cord to the adapter or adapter to the effects(better here). This is a passive way of fighting noise, it will not affect you sound nor change your components. Ham radio store sell these called "chokes". They are formed to fit the power cords, get these if no avaible am radio or you want to spend money. Some noise problems are not so easily fixed. Older houses or older Tv's ect. in the home add into this equation. Sometimes an electrician sould be consulted. The myth about crossing wires at right angles is just that- a myth. Electrical feilds don't care much about how the wire lies.
Members Sephiroth000 Posted November 24, 2002 Author Members Posted November 24, 2002 Boss pedal myths. Most anal guitar store empoyee's will insist upon purchasing a Boss adapter because" nothing else will power it properly". Also the manual supplied, states the same thing. Fooey!. As long as your adapter meets these conditions , things will function properly. It must be 9volt The tip size must be the same The tip must be positive on the barrel and neg. in the tip(all pedals are the same). Yor adapter should be something;you found on the street, got for free, or less than 10 bucks(quality). Meet these conditions and it will work like anyother pedal setup. Also, you can run upto five Boss pedal with one Boss adapeter, using a "dasiy chain"(link of wire with many barrel plugs on it). There is enough ampage to run five a t one time with the adapter not overheating. I do this regulary. If you do screw up your pedal because you are incompetet, or used grandma's old sewing machine adapter.I'm not respnsible. Don't spend money when you don't need too! Have fun and leave some comments in this thread!
Members StratKat Posted November 24, 2002 Members Posted November 24, 2002 Mannnnn, that trick with the rod and coil thing is terrific! Ive never heard that trick before! Now all have to do is find a noisy environment to try it out on! Thanks!And my two cents...I hear alot of people tell me you cant run alot of effects together in series before the preamp without noise.BS!Its the order of events, the quality of cables, and the setting of effect levels that dictate how much noise you get in that scenario.I see alot of guys patch in a pedal and there is noise....Then they fiddle with JUST it for a few seconds and pull it out saying its crapola. I buy them for peanuts from them and laugh all the way to the bank.Its true that some stuff is cheap. Some stuff is junk. But more people toss out stuff without doing a really good thorough analysis of WHY it isnt working right too soon.I never give up on something until i know it cant work for my needs after really trying to overcome the problems.Some effects like batteries. Some like power supplies. Some may even like specific battery manufacturers and specific power supply makers. Why? {censored}, i dont know, but its true....Same thing with cord cable material AND connectors! I once used this thin wire from coax stuff i found in a business for cords. It was flimsy, thin, and didnt look like anything special. But it lasted almost two years before a short! And it was quiet. I cut it up eventually to make patch cords for my rack. Nice and quiet.... What was it? Beats me.... But i wish i had an entire roll of it. Thing is, i was always told thin wire wasnt sheilded enough to cut out noise.....Same thing with regards to where something is placed onstage. Just moving your rig a couple inches can make a diff just like where you stand or face with a strat.I have several cheapy power supplies laying around that i grab and test out whenever i get noise in a pedal. Half the time i can get a lower noise signal with one of them. Some of them were for clippers, some for toys, some for radios,...I do check tip and voltage specs before trying one out. But just something as simple as that can make a diff.Currently i have found the Dunlop power supplies (Juice and Brick) to be great and noiseless.. I run two in my NGM board.
Members Sephiroth000 Posted November 24, 2002 Author Members Posted November 24, 2002 Using quality cables and such are an important part..Properly diagnosing problems are too.. Keep an objective view to all aspects of musicianship....
Members ctoddrun Posted October 24, 2004 Members Posted October 24, 2004 I bet this comes up for more folks than just me all the time. Consider this a bump and boy am I glad I came upon it. Can we get a sticky?
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