The level of hum is usually directly related to the guitar's proximity to any large mains transformers in the room. Move the guitar around over an area of a few feet either way to see if the hum goes away. The rest of us will be hearing at least a bit of buzzing and maybe a bit of 50/60Hz hum as well. If you hear no more noise than before, congratulations you must have a fantastically well-screened guitar and the perfect guitar-recording environment. With nothing connected, the amp's input jack will be automatically short-circuited to ground with the guitar connected, but turned down, the input is again shorted, but at the other end of the cable, so the cable is the only variable.Īssuming all is well with the cable, now turn up the guitar's volume to maximum, hold the strings in a normal playing fashion and listen again. If there is any more noise than there was before the guitar was connected then the cable is at fault. When tracking down noise it always pays to initially reduce your system to the minimum number of components, so begin by connecting your guitar directly to a single amp or recording processor via a screened cable, set the volume of the amp or monitor system to a normal operating level, turn the guitar's volume control all the way down and just listen. Passing one of the scratchplate screws through it ensures consistent contact. Left: A small tag of copper foil is used to continue the screening onto the underside of the shielded scratchplate. From here on, I'm also going to treat amps and recording processors (Line 6 Pods and the like) as the same, because it is the 'upstream' noise of the guitar itself and related systems that we are interested in.
That is beyond the scope of this article, so for these purposes I'll assume that that part of your rig is clean. If your amp or monitoring system hums or buzzes excessively with no input connected to it, then you've got an equipment malfunction. You could end up taking steps to solve a problem you don't have, as well as completely failing to solve the one you actually do have. If you don't do this, you have no idea whether the noise you are hearing from the amplifier is being generated within the amp itself, or being picked up by the guitar and fed to the amp. The most efficient way to track down noise in a guitar system is to think of the amplifier or studio monitor system as the end of your signal chain and work systematically back from there. If you think you are suffering from noise that isn't generated in one of these ways, I'd like to hear about it! Most noise in an electric guitar rig emanates from one or more of five different sources: amplifier self-generated hum and/or hiss hum or buzz picked up by the guitar itself self-generated noise from any pedals/processors in the circuit gain structure-related noise, such as cascaded distortion stages and ground-loop-related hum. There must be electrical continuity throughout, and in this example, every join in the copper foil is bridged with solder.Įlectrical noise - hiss, buzz and hum - is something that plagues every electric guitarist to some degree, but noise comes in a variety of forms and it is important to establish exactly which kind(s) you are experiencing in order to devise an appropriate solution. To make a significant difference, the whole surface area of the pickup and wiring cavities must be covered and connected to the earth side of the circuit. Above: A properly screened Strat-type guitar.
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