Ground Hum and Noise

Yes, not happy to hear that was the case. I am going to make some more inquiries into the complete story of what is used etc....
 
@Adinfinitum I am in a similar situation. Old house built in the late 60's. The hum is terrible throughout. I need to angle myself in a specific position just to minimize it. I don't know much about electrical but was hoping there was something I could get (power conditioner?) to eliminate the problem. I did by that Hum eliminator plug and it didn't help one bit. Aside from moving are there any practical solutions to this? We do have copper pipes FWIW. I did go out into my backyard (where the electrical runs) with just guitar, laptop and an interface and still had the same level of hum/buzz. I was pretty surprised by that. Out front wasn't as bad, but still - I was outside
 
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@Adinfinitum I am in a similar situation. Old house built in the late 60's. The hum is terrible throughout. I need to angle myself in a specific position just to minimize it. I don't know much about electrical but was hoping there was something I could get (power conditioner?) to eliminate the problem. I did by that Hum eliminator plug and it didn't help one bit. Aside from moving are there any practical solutions to this? We do have copper pipes FWIW
If you need to angle your guitar to minimize the noise, then the problem isn’t your power lines, it’s electromagnetic radiation getting picked up by your guitar. There probably some electrical gadget in your house that’s the culprit. Frequent offenders are light dimmers and Wi-Fi routers.
 
Aluminum wire is famous for corrosion, with connections deteriorating over time.
It's also famously prone to localized thinning and even snapping if flexed a few times. The localized thinning causes that small spot on the wire to heat up if any appreciable current is pulled through the wire, like, say, a hair dryer in your bathroom, which is normally on a 15A circuit, which uses the thinnest wire in your 120/240V electrical system to begin with. A localized thin spot or actual break can happen at any point in the wire, including somewhere up in the wall, if it got flexed too many times or too tightly, or a staple was holding it too tightly or at a tight angle or the guy installing it missed the staple and whacked the wire with his hammer. Worse, it might take years to actually do anything big enough to cause you to go hunting for the issue. My old house in SoPho was built in 1968. Luckily only the 15A branches were wired with the junk.
 
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If you need to angle your guitar to minimize the noise, then the problem isn’t your power lines, it’s electromagnetic radiation getting picked up by your guitar. There probably some electrical gadget in your house that’s the culprit. Frequent offenders are light dimmers and Wi-Fi routers.

@Rex if after I address everything possible on my end (I’m in a townhouse) and still have this issue, what are my options in trying to eliminate/minimize this? Thanks in advance
 
If you need to angle your guitar to minimize the noise, then the problem isn’t your power lines, it’s electromagnetic radiation getting picked up by your guitar. There probably some electrical gadget in your house that’s the culprit. Frequent offenders are light dimmers and Wi-Fi routers.
No, if the house isn't wired correctly the wiring can create loops which, because they are loops, create EMI.

For example, using the refrigerator analogy again, if the current goes into the fridge on the hot but all of it doesn't return on the ADJACENT neutral then this is current loop. Current flowing in a loop creates a magnetic field.
 
Back to what I originally wrote - if you have noise when you have ONLY a guitar/bass (which is properly wired, natch) plugged directly into the Axe with a (properly wired/shielded) cable, AND you're listening with headphones plugged directly into the Axe...then you have an environmental issue. Maybe poor grounding/wiring, maybe unfortunate circuit layout (light switches where you have multiple switches to control the same device can do this), maybe you live next door to a covert DARPA lab, who knows.

If you don't have noise in that situation, but you do when you start deviating from it (adding other gear into the chain), then you can probably eliminate it. I have a lot of stuff connected in parallel, so I can switch it in and out, and I had a lot of issues with ground looping. My solution was using ground-lifted XLR connections wherever possible, and transformer-isolated connections (Ebtech hum eliminator is one type, although I built my own) elsewhere.

Often devices operating elsewhere in the system (house) can fly signal back onto the power. When my wife uses a hair dryer (in a bathroom 30 feet away from my 'music room', and on a different circuit), the Tripp-Lite regulator I use to drive everything starts humming audibly. Nothing happens otherwise that I can tell (it doesn't get hot, and there's no artifacts in the signal while I'm playing/listening).
 
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Let’s say the issue comes from wiring. Is there an appliance that can be plugged into the wall (that maybe your gear plugs into too) to eliminate/reduce this?

@Adinfinitum Sorry for hijacking your thread, though maybe something mentioned could help
 
No, if the house isn't wired correctly the wiring can create loops which, because they are loops, create EMI.

For example, using the refrigerator analogy again, if the current goes into the fridge on the hot but all of it doesn't return on the ADJACENT neutral then this is current loop. Current flowing in a loop creates a magnetic field.
If the current doesn’t return on the adjacent neutral, what path could it take?
 
@Rex if after I address everything possible on my end (I’m in a townhouse) and still have this issue, what are my options in trying to eliminate/minimize this? Thanks in advance
If you’ve eliminated all sources on your end, and you still have the issue, you could shield your guitar, switch to humbuckers if you haven’t, or become friends with your immediate neighbors so they’ll let you hunt down possible sources in their living spaces.
 
If the current doesn’t return on the adjacent neutral, what path could it take?

I've seen plugs in old houses - especially houses that were not originally 'electric', or were post-and-tube - where the 'hot' runs are totally separate from neutral/ground and could come from a completely different part of the house.

The only times I've seen this in the Age of Romex is like I described above, where you have multiple switches handling hot but only a single neutral run.
 
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If you’ve eliminated all sources on your end, and you still have the issue, you could shield your guitar, switch to humbuckers if you haven’t, or become friends with your immediate neighbors so they’ll let you hunt down possible sources in their living spaces.
They're Seymour Duncan P90s. I can try shielding for sure. Much appreciated.
 
They're Seymour Duncan P90s. I can try shielding for sure. Much appreciated.

Shielding probably won't do much. Since the 'M' in EMI is "Magnetic", effective shielding against it would also block the string signal.

I love P90s, but they're unfortunately one of the 'noisiest' pickups since the coil has so much surface area. If I had a situation where I needed to somehow 'quiet' P90s, I think an Ilitch coil is about the only option that won't mess with the basic tone. But in most P90 guitars it'd be pretty invasive.
 
Shielding probably won't do much. Since the 'M' in EMI is "Magnetic", effective shielding against it would also block the string signal.

I love P90s, but they're unfortunately one of the 'noisiest' pickups since the coil has so much surface area. If I had a situation where I needed to somehow 'quiet' P90s, I think an Ilitch coil is about the only option that won't mess with the basic tone. But in most P90 guitars it'd be pretty invasive.
Shielding a guitar that's not shielded will definitely improve the situation. Shielding doesn't block magnetic fields. And you wouldn't put shielding between the pickups and your strings, anyway.
 
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Update: I think I found my issue in the new house. I took my gigging rig (AX8, 412 cab and Matrix poweramp) into my room and hooked it up. Magically..... No hum at all. All the Axe-FX goodness I am used to. Only difference...... Wireless. No cable on the floor. Hooked cable up and horrible hum immediately noticeable. We have a post tension slab..... Could that create an issue? I know my wireless has a buffered input and output which may be of some help but ultimately no cable on the floor. Electrical engineers......? Help..... Thoughts...
 
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Post-tension construction shouldn't make a difference. It's just a little more steel in a slab that already has a lot of steel in it. At this point, i'm starting to suspect your guitar cord. Try a different one, and see what you get.
 
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