60Hz Hum When Facing Axe-Fx...

I have the same, only when using single coil fenders. When I turn away from my axe , hum disappears.. Have it on an irregular basis though.
 
Haha !
Great news, guitarpickups pick up noise. :)
They allways did as far as I can remember. I bet it´s not only 60 Hz but every frequenzy in the space.
One million reasons for this. Electromagnetic fields caused by anything.... Plastic laptop ?
 
Thanks everyone for all your input!

It's got to be something with the new pickups, although they are much lower output than the previous ones, they must be the culprit. I'm going to look at the grounding and make sure it's good.

If it had always done this I wouldn't even worry about it, but this is all of a sudden.
 
Have you, btw, tried moving your guitar and Axe to a different room? Maybe it's a faulty ground in your room.

Did you possibly move a router in your room once all this started? I remember having hum with my router in close proximity to my gear aswell.
 
Zwiebelchen said:
Have you, btw, tried moving your guitar and Axe to a different room? Maybe it's a faulty ground in your room.

Did you possibly move a router in your room once all this started? I remember having hum with my router in close proximity to my gear aswell.
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Since the hum goes away when the volume of the guitar is down I think we're determined that it's not a room issue.

I don't have any new electronics in here, but I'm about to start disconnecting everything just to be sure!

It's got to be the grounding and/or wiring of the pickups. I just had them installed and it was dead silent with the originals (which were much higher output). I never noticed it with my other guitar, but I don't use it much so it's possible it's always been there with that one.
 
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Could a ceramic vs alnico magnet in the pickup be the cause?

The PRS Metal \m/ pickups I removed were ceramic, and the 59/09's I installed are alnico. My other PRS has a Duncan JB in it, which is also an alnico.
 
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Sure you didn't inadvertently bypass or lower the threshold on the noise gate?

I have a few guitars I can barely use without gating, and when I record with them I'm careful to position myself at the quiet angle first.
 
Robboman said:
Sure you didn't inadvertently bypass or lower the threshold on the noise gate?

I have a few guitars I can barely use without gating, and when I record with them I'm careful to position myself at the quiet angle first.
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I'm not sure of that... I'll check it out.
 
PRSCustom24 said:
Since the hum goes away when the volume of the guitar is down I think we're determined that it's not a room issue.
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Wait, what? That pretty much confirms that this is a room issue. Your guitar pickups pick up the excessive EMI in your room. Proper grounding and shielding will not make your guitar immune to EMI. My guitar is properly shielded and still picks up hum from a nearby router (It's dead quiet otherwise).
 
Zwiebelchen said:
Wait, what? That pretty much confirms that this is a room issue. Your guitar pickups pick up the excessive EMI in your room. Proper grounding and shielding will not make your guitar immune to EMI. My guitar is properly shielded and still picks up hum from a nearby router (It's dead quiet otherwise).
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I mean not an electrical issue (ground loop etc).
 
PRS: I've gotten this issue at all times with certain pups. Active pups will bring it on even more. For me, all my guitar pre-amps behave in this manner when at close range. Let me tell you, my studios are wired so tight and so clean, there's no doubt in my mind it's your pups on that particular guitar and it is NOT a grounding issue. Certain guitars hum more than others when facing outboard gear. You have 6 possible fixes:

1. Turn away. I know you know this and it seems obvious, but it's really one of the easiest fixes. I've done the "turn away" method for years. It didn't matter if I used a 2101, a Tri-Axis, a Mesa recording pre or my AxeFxII. When I face the rack with certain guitars, it's just going to hum. Other guitars, little to no hum depending on the pups. But active pups....almost as noisy as single coils depending on how much gain is used.

2. Move your rig out of the room if you're recording and use your pedal board or Axe Edit.

3. Any chance your monitor on your pc is causing some noise? Try turning it off and see if the noise goes away or lessens.

4. You can try one of those ground lift 3 prong to 2 prong adapters. Though I don't condone this, sometimes you'd be surprised on how it can remove hum. If you get the slightest bit of thunder or lightning or know in advance that a storm is coming, get rid of this plug as soon as you can. I use one with my wireless these days due to a slight hum. If I'm in a storm situation (I always try my best to power down completely while removing AC lines from the wall or I just use numerous UPS boxes with battery back-up) I just get rid of that plug and deal with a little hum.

5. If you notice this hum is volume knob related, use more noise gate. I like the classic gate more than the smart gate that is offered. The classic doesn't choke my sound as much. Also, determine that the noise comes from something gain related. For example, I'm primarily a rock/metal guitarist. So I use a lot more gain than a blues or fusion player. The high gain sounds are the only sounds that give me a little hum. That said, I'm old school and come from the days where we used to have to stomp on a pedal and shut our volume knobs off in between phrases. I'm so fast on my volume knob, it's actually kinda scary.

With that in mind, I can run my noise gate at 90. All that does is cut out hiss for me when I am not playing. If I open my volume knob and leave it open, it will feedback and hum like a banshee screaming. But because I never allow this to happen EVER, you don't even notice it. Now, if I record, it's a little tougher to be precise and of course things recording wise are more audible and unforgiving. In that situation, I run my gate up higher so that I CAN leave my volume wide open. If I don't do this and try my old school tactic of shutting down the knob, though I have it down pretty good, it's too easy to cut something short. So my fix is to leave the knob wide open to where the gate kills any hum or additional noise.

From there, I just mess with the gate and get it as close as I can so that it doesn't choke off my sound when I lower my volume knob. It takes a little bit of tweaking to get it where you need it, but depends on how much gain you use as well as how much your pups are creating a problem. For me, I've been lucky enough to just control the threshold on the gate while never touching anything else. The stock settings seem to work really well for me as long as I use the classic gate. To kill most all noise for me, I usually end up between 80 and 70 to where it won't choke my sound. 60 something will totally kill all noise...but I get a little choking. A little tweaking with the other settings and I'd probably get that tighter too...but I always want the ability to lower my volume knob and get a lighter gain sound without the sound choking. This brings me to our last possible fix...

6. Use one of your expression pedals to lower the gain in your amp block if need be. I find that I get a better sound with my volume knob wide open and lowering the amp gain or tube screamer gain...or now thanks to a recent update from Cliff, I can control the compressor output level which is one of the main sources of gain in my particular sound. I step on a pedal, it reduces the gain and I have a clean, yet dirty sound that is right on the threshold of breaking up. It also removes all hum and noise, so again, I don't have to run my gate any higher than 90 when I play live.

So try some of this stuff out and see if it works for you. Best of luck man....and don't stress....like I said, this thing you hear has been ongoing for me for years and I have two serious studios where I do work for people all over the world. I'm wired and designed to industry standard and still get the hum you are talking about. For me it IS guitar/pup dependent. :)
 
PRSCustom24 said:
I mean not an electrical issue (ground loop etc).
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It pretty much means it is a ground loop. Hum occurs when a MAGNETIC field is converted by your pickups into an electrical signal. Magnetic fields are created by current flowing in a LOOP. The biggest offenders are things with coils in them like transformers and wall dimmers (transformers use coils of wire as magnetic circuits, dimmers use coils of wire as a wire-wound rheostat). The larger the loop, the greater the field.

However you can often get unintended loops when the current to a device doesn't return on that device's return. In a proper electric circuit the current flows into the device on the hot conductor and returns on the neutral conductor. Since these two wires are in close proximity, or at least they should be, the loop area is very small and the magnetic field is then also very small. However, if the current returns on a different path, say through a ground connection between two devices then loop area can be large and the resulting field will then be strong.

Another type of ground loop occurs when two interconnected pieces of gear are plugged into separate electric circuits with differing ground potential. Since electric codes require AC-powered equipment to have a safety ground the ground potential can differ between circuits. This can be caused by induced currents from nearby AC fields and from leakage currents into the ground circuits. Either way this causes a current to flow in the shield of the cables interconnecting the equipment. This can cause hum in the interconnected equipment as any impedance in the cable will cause an induced voltage on the receiving end. This also creates a magnetic field since the current flows in a loop between the equipment and through the ground wires thus creating a large loop. Your guitar can be affected by this field.

The first thing to try is to make sure everything is plugged into the same circuit and that your power cords are routed as close together as possible so as to reduce loop area.
 
FractalAudio said:
It pretty much means it is a ground loop. Hum occurs when a MAGNETIC field is converted by your pickups into an electrical signal. Magnetic fields are created by current flowing in a LOOP. The biggest offenders are things with coils in them like transformers and wall dimmers (transformers use coils of wire as magnetic circuits, dimmers use coils of wire as a wire-wound rheostat). The larger the loop, the greater the field.

However you can often get unintended loops when the current to a device doesn't return on that device's return. In a proper electric circuit the current flows into the device on the hot conductor and returns on the neutral conductor. Since these two wires are in close proximity, or at least they should be, the loop area is very small and the magnetic field is then also very small. However, if the current returns on a different path, say through a ground connection between two devices then loop area can be large and the resulting field will then be strong.

Another type of ground loop occurs when two interconnected pieces of gear are plugged into separate electric circuits with differing ground potential. Since electric codes require AC-powered equipment to have a safety ground the ground potential can differ between circuits. This can be caused by induced currents from nearby AC fields and from leakage currents into the ground circuits. Either way this causes a current to flow in the shield of the cables interconnecting the equipment. This can cause hum in the interconnected equipment as any impedance in the cable will cause an induced voltage on the receiving end. This also creates a magnetic field since the current flows in a loop between the equipment and through the ground wires thus creating a large loop. Your guitar can be affected by this field.

The first thing to try is to make sure everything is plugged into the same circuit and that your power cords are routed as close together as possible so as to reduce loop area.
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Thanks for such a detailed explanation!

I'm trying to determine what would have caused this to suddenly appear and if the install on my pickups was done properly or not. The only thing that changed in my setup from the morning to afternoon were the pickups in my PRS.

I literally unplugged my guitar, had the pickups swapped out and plugged it back in - none of my equipment was moved, plugged-in or unplugged, and nothing was added or changed in my room.

What's strange is that I went to lower output pickups in the swap, so I would have expected any amount of noise to be reduced.

Sounds insane, but could going from ceramic to alnico magnets in the pickups cause this or make it more noticeable? That's the only thing that changed.

Thx-
 
PRSCustom24 said:
Sounds insane, but could going from ceramic to alnico magnets in the pickups cause this or make it more noticeable? That's the only thing that changed.
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You went from high output pickups to 59/09's. If I'm not mistaken, 59/09's are PAF style humbuckers. PAF style humbuckers typically have unbalanced coils. Your high output pickups likely have balanced coils.

To be the most effective at hum reduction, the inside and outside coils in a humbucking pickup (i.e. neck side coil / bridge side coil) need to be wound identically (same impedance). PAF style pickups are usually "unbalanced", with one coil being wound a bit higher than the other. That's part of why they sound the way they do, and one of the variables pickup maker will play with. The downside is that they are a somewhat noisier (less able to cancel hum).

So, I don't think it has anything to do with different magnets. Rather, it has to do with the 59/09's mis-matched coils. Or, you might have a defective set.

Terry.
 
The same happens to me...but only when hooking up my am std strat with a G50 wireless. No issues with my other guitars.
 
Zwiebelchen said:
Wait, didn't you say that it was the same for the other guitar?
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I did, but I haven't used the other guitar for even 5 minutes since I got the new one in January and I can't be sure it was ever as silent.

That one has a Duncan JB in it, which is very similar to the 59/09's that I put in the new one. Both guitars have a very similar hum now.

After more experimenting I can say it only happens on my high-gain presets - clean are dead quiet.
 
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