Is this noise normal?

[Rex]

That Best Tronics cable is great stuff. I made a bunch of cables with that about 10 years ago and they're all still going strong. Very flexible, coils well, and very quiet.

You do have to be a bit careful with the conductive black shield though. You have to cut it back from the center insulator like shown in the picture. I if you cut if off flush, it can increase the cable's capacitance.

+1 to all that. Rugged, quiet, and it lies well on the stage.

For guitar cables, that cable is superior to RG58A. The parasitic capacitance of the Bestronics cable is only 20 pf per foot. With RG58A, it’s 30 pf per foot. That makes the Bestronics cable better suited to passive guitar pickups, especially for long runs. The fact that the cable is supple means less stress on terminations, which lowers the likelihood of cable failure in the middle of a song. And it’s just a more pleasurable stage experience. So Grandma can have her TV back.

 

[Kablesp]

I took my FM3, guitar, and headphones to my car and drove around the neighborhood and the noise did not change at all. I feel like ive exhausted all of my options besides walking around with a battery amp (which I do not have) to hopefully find some kind of issue nearby.

 

[Rex]

I took my FM3, guitar, and headphones to my car and drove around the neighborhood and the noise did not change at all. I feel like ive exhausted all of my options besides walking around with a battery amp (which I do not have) to hopefully find some kind of issue nearby.

No change? Not even a little? That's unexpected. Are there any transmitter antennas near you?

 

[mr_fender]

Try plugging something other than a guitar into the inputs. Something like a line out from a phone or MP3 player or something.

Also, do you hear the noise if you unplug the instrument cable from the FM3 and then play audio through it via USB?

 

[Rumbletone]

See the difference
View attachment 139579View attachment 139578

The black foil is also shielding material (2 shieldings). The dielectric is much thicker and the standard shielding is has honeycomb pattern:

But the biggest pro, it's loseless.

They are different but they are both co-axial cables.

As for the black layer under the shielding, is it not there to reduce triboelectric noise?

 

[Joe Bfstplk]

When I roll the volume down there is no noise. When I unplug the cable from the guitar, I do get the same noise so I am eliminating guitars from the equation

That logic does not work. Rolling the guitar volume down shorts the tip to ground and stops the noise, so the guitar is the source of the noise. The open jack will also pick up noise, as the volume pot is not shorting tip to ground.

Ive tried several and they all give the same noise, all humbuckers. I have unplugged monitors, monitor speakers, bluetooth adapters, USB cables, turntables, and none of them affect the noise. I have tried listening back through my studio monitors through my Apollo, and also the headphone jack on the FM3 itself with the same results.

The $64000 question remains - where are all of your guitars picking up the noise from?

Does turning around or moving the guitar around while connected and volume is up?