Help with Hum, Buzz, RF noise, etc!!!

[tubeman]

hi all, i've always had certain levels of guitar/bass pickup hum, but as i do more and more recording, the humming is becoming more and more annoying, and was wondering what methods all of you use to get around this.

my passive humbucking guitars, basses, and active pickup basses seem to hum on all pickup combinations. more drastically, my potted p90 and single coil guitars really hum when using one pickup...but they are pretty silent when both pickups are on.

it doesn't matter if it's just guitar-cable-amp or guitar-effects/cables-amp, the hum is there. i've also tried two prong adapters, the hum eliminator (which made everything worse), different outlets, turning the refridgerator off, etc. there are no lcd monitors around either and the rack is in the other room.

when i move in a 360 circle, there are certain angles where the hum decreases, but i'm having trouble getting it down to a usable level. there are also certain instances when i touch something metal that's plugged in (not necessarily in the recording the chain), there's a little "click" and the hum decreases slightly, but that only helps with the humbuckers, not with any of the single coils/p90s.

i did notice when i notch a take right at 180 Hz, much of the hum went away...60, 120, 240, etc. didn't do so much good.

should i contact an electrician and see if my old brooklyn brownstone has crappy wiring/ground? or are there other things i can try to minimize hum?

[proxy]

Hey Tubeman,

Giving you a bump, because I'd love to hear anyone's advice on this too. I moved last year to a new apartment, and I'm dealing with that exact experience. Same gear as the last apartment, but the amp and guitars, and even direct-pedals seem to be a little haywire. The only thing that's descent is if the guitar is flat, and one weird place that's about 6 feet from my desk.

I'm even experiencing something where my sm57 has its own hum as I move it around near the amp. Not just more volume, but some interaction that is actually creating a lot of hum the closer it gets. =(

- Justin

[pixelhead]

Same Here

[pixelhead]

I guess we are the only three people here with electric problems

[John The Cut]

I was in a studio once where the guitarist had this problem. Recording in the control room. The engineer took a length of wire and attached it to the bridge and hooked the other end onto one of the rack units. Seemed to work, but you have to play standing still

[Trancetones]

Hi, I read this on a recording web site and it has helped incredibly!!! Its a good place to start and it should solve some problems for less than $20. Go to Home Depot and get a roll of 10 guage copper electical wire in green. Also pick up a pipe ground connector (Its a brass clamp with a ground screw.) Connect the connector to a cold water pipe and run the ground wire to the outlet you are going to use. (I use the pipe to my outdoor hose.) Then replace the ground on the outlet with the ground wire. Instant isolated ground. Test the outlet with an outlet tester to make sure it is grounded after you do it. Also don't forget to turn off the breaker before doing it. If you are not using outboard converters, then your converters can also put some hum in the signal chain as the sound card will pick up computer noise. Also replace the input jacks on your guitars if they are loose.

[dbbubba]

Hey Trancetones...
If that worked for you then you were lucky.
The scenario that you describe is a perfect recipe for a ground loop.
If you plug ANY of your gear into an outlet that doesn't also have the same ground wire to the water pipe circuit you'll have a loop.
A loop equals more hum.

Generally the green GND wire in your outlets has very little to do with your hum situation because the GND wire just travels back up the Romex and into the load center where it is tied to the nuetral buss along with the white nuetral wire.
IN OTHER WORDS... GROUND IS JUST AN EXTRA (or safety) NUETRAL.
Ground is there in case the nuetral wire become un-bonded.
In other words... you don't want 120V sitting at the appliance/device waiting for a place to travel to earth... like through your body!
Unless your GND wire is disconnected it ends up tied to a coldwater pipe or a stake along with the nuetral.
An extra GND wire just increases the potential for a ground loop.
It is rarely neccesary.

Guitars and basses hum like a bitch, but you gotta' use noise gates or know how to use FX.

Your SM57 is probebly picking up hum from the field generated by the power supply transformer in your amp.
If it is a combo amp you just have to experiment, but if the amp has a seperate head from the cab, the move it away.

Danny Brown

[True North]

Pickups are a major problem. Cheap light Faders can also cause issues. In fact that derives a current can interfere with your guitar and it's pickups. Flourescent bulbs can also cause some weird issues.

More often than not the biggest problem has to do with the guitar itself rather than the amp (most of the time). Try moving your guitar around, does the buzz change? Find the quietest area in the rooms. Try also using a good sheilded cable this will help, but not necessarily eliminate the problem.

[tubeman]

i also think it's the guitars...mostly old electronics/wiring, but i also think it has something to do with my building. i don't get as much noise at other locations, even if i have everything in the apartment unplugged except the guitar amp.

perhaps shielding the guitars' electronics as well as replacing pots, etc would help?

[tubeman]

btw, i bought one of those outlet checkers, and everything tested fine. also, i think i mentioned this above, but when i notch, 180 hz seemed to take out the most noise, not 60.

i read something that 180 hz hum is actually electrostatic hum, not electromagnetinc - does that mean anything really?

[KPOP]

I have the same problem. First, I looked the studio grounding and electricity, but found nothing in there. After testing a while, I realized that there's no difference between any grounding, guitar or amp whatsoever. These amps work fine in other locations. Every single piece with a pickup was humming. Great!

Active pickups were the most humming ones. After that, I came with the idea that it has to be electro-magnetic field which adapts to the guitar/bass pickups "from the air" and there's nothing you can do. The magnetic field in my situation is so strong that it'll pass concrete, wood, glass, everything. It has nothing to do with the grounding. The building is an old heavy-industrial factory, which still operates but has rented the rooms for normal office and light industrial use. And that's very commom place to build a large studio facility, eh..

Then I contacted the building manager and we were locating any possible causes INSIDE the building. We found a HUGE industrial transformer unit on the ground floor, and it emits very strong electro-magnetic field up to 50 meters' of circle area. It was easy to locate with a portable inductionloop with a small speaker. These you can maybe borrow somewhere. You can also try this with a guitar and a portable miniamp which works with batteries.

I'm working on trying to minimize the field by using lead panels. It could be very expensive, but lead will help, I hope. I have an idea of covering the transformer room downstairs with lead panels, or trying to locate and cover the output cable coming out into the building. Usually, these cables are thick as your arm and will contain a strong voltage.

Try to find if there's any of these transformers or thick cables around.. then consult the building owner (if you're not the one) and ask for some lead treatment. I will post you some results ASAP if I come up with a solution in my studio. This thing is really driving me crazy, because I do lots of heavy guitars.

Cheers and good luck,

kai

[proxy]

Wow - interesting and crazy scenario... Lead Shields!

Now that you mention that though, our new apartment is somewhat near a train stop. I mean, it's far enough away that I didn't think it could be that, but all those trains are running off a wire along the top and there are several mondo-caution-crazy-electricity towers there (how's that for technical).

Maybe I can ask the Metro North to build a giant lead wall along my stretch of the tracks. I'm sure when they hear that it's adding hum to my guitar tracking, they'll be happy to oblige.

Ah well, careful guitar playing position and gates it is...

- Justin

[KPOP]

Originally Posted by proxy

Maybe I can ask the Metro North to build a giant lead wall along my stretch of the tracks. I'm sure when they hear that it's adding hum to my guitar tracking, they'll be happy to oblige.

My place is right next to a decent sized railway station and the rails and wires are just 15 metres from the building. My Trident console is shakin when an oil train passes in the night time 140km/h.. Feels funny when you're mixing and the whole place is having a small earthquake.. Seriously, it's so little that you hardly can feel it. But that has nothing to do with the hum. It's the fukken mega-transformer. I think with that they could power up a small town.

Luckily, my studio is just the opposite side of the building, but actually the office rooms in the railway side were suffering from disturbance.. Every time a train went by, all pc monitors went crazy.. Actually the building manager did contact Finnish National Railway Company to make something about it. They ended up to ground the whole 60x12 metres brick wall facing the railway together with the railway ground.. If a high-voltage wire cuts and falls, there's no danger of having a huge shock in the building.

I'm serious about this lead covering. Lead will work in order to isolate this kind of issues. Next thing is to build a Faraday's Cage..
I really, really hope that I can keep expences down. I've talked to several AE and electricity professionals and they all said that it's going to cost. a lot. Just because it's in the air there's lots of testing with different setups to make it work. I'd be happy if the hum just would be even half of what is it now.

Hmm.. if Buckethead had a chicken cage in the studio, I might wanna the same but with some lead...

[tubeman]

had some free time this morning, so i recorded the hum and messed with some EQ.

i found that cutting out 60 hz didn't make any difference, BUT, 180, 300, 120 and about 10 others (certain increments of 60) up to around 2000 reduced the hum significantly.

180 was the biggest culprit, followed by 300 then 120.

didn't matter if i'm using humbuckers, single coils, or p90s - as long as i'm in single pickup mode, the hum is there. on a couple guitars, using two pickups cuts out all the hum.

i guess what i'm wondering...is there anything i can do about this (asides from notching out after recording or building a cage)?

i suppose i could re-setup my studio so everything is oriented northeast which is the direction that induces the least hum. and then tell any guitarist/bassist that comes though to face that way

...or i could move out...or bitch to the building owner enough times that he hires an electrician to check things out on his wallet.