Techniques to decrease general high gain noise?

[Sidivan]

I used to have this little 2x12 Crate piece of crap amp that would pick up radio stations in my old apt. Craziest damned thing I ever heard. Didn't even need to have a guitar plugged in.

 

[rsf1977]

I used to have this little 2x12 Crate piece of crap amp that would pick up radio stations in my old apt. Craziest damned thing I ever heard. Didn't even need to have a guitar plugged in.

I think crate should have a radio tuner built in so you dial in what station you want to pollute your signal with lol

and how come no one makes a pedal that makes this garbage happen, what fun! lol

 

[VegaBaby]

and how come no one makes a pedal that makes this garbage happen, what fun! lol

They do..they're called Germanium FuzzFaces and especially good for picking up radio is the FuzzFactory.

 

[Radley]

I typically use a Parametric just before the Amp block, boosting a lot around 400 to 700z with a very wide bell curve (Q) - this provides a lot of extra 'push' for hi gain sounds which means you can run the Amp's gain setting lower and achieve less electronic & digital noise, especially if you also pull back the upper highs with the Para or a Filter (pre-EQ). I always have plenty of highs in spite of it, but substantially less noise.

~Radster~

Sounds great but I'm not very good at dialling in PEQs. What's a bell curve and how do I achieve it? Do I turn the Q up? Any chance you have a patch to share that I could examine, or a graphic to show the settings?

Stringster,

Sorry for the slow response The lower the Q value, the wider the bell curve (swath of frequencies) - if the Q swath is too narrow, the boost starts to sound too much like a cocked wah-wah pedal (nasally and thin) The goal here is to push a lot of the center-mid frequencies while de-emphasizing the lows & highs, because the distortion process generates it's own upper frequencies & harmonics regardless (similar to how an Aphex exciter uses controlled distortion & filtering to generate more hi harmonics in a mix).

~Rad~

 

[HailHalford]

and how come no one makes a pedal that makes this garbage happen, what fun! lol

They do..they're called Germanium FuzzFaces and especially good for picking up radio is the FuzzFactory.

:lol: This weekend I was playing with my Fuzz Factory and picking up radio stations I didn't even know existed. And I'm in the basement! If I could find a way to incorporate it into a song...

 

[VegaBaby]

:lol: This weekend I was playing with my Fuzz Factory and picking up radio stations I didn't even know existed. And I'm in the basement! If I could find a way to incorporate it into a song...

I had mine pick up 'preacher', 'touch the screen' type stations I could swear came straight from the Mississippi ... and thatwas in London :lol:

 

[rsf1977]

:?: what are the biggest culprits of noise in a passive guitars electronics? And are there any modifications that work to lower the general noise?

 

[FractalAudio]

:?: what are the biggest culprits of noise in a passive guitars electronics? And are there any modifications that work to lower the general noise?

There are two types of "noise". One is thermal noise, the other is more correctly identified as interference.

Thermal noise (Johnson noise) is a function of resistance, temperature and bandwidth. The noise voltage is given by sqrt(4KTBR), where K is Boltzman's constant, T is temperature, B is bandwidth and R is resistance. Thermal noise is "white" and contributes "hiss".

There is little you can do to reduce thermal noise. You can use low impedance pickups but then your signal level drops too so the S/N ratio isn't improved. Active pickups can sometimes help if they use a good low-noise preamp. Since noise power is a function of bandwidth you can use a lowpass filter to reduce the noise.

Interference is hum, buzz and any other non-stochastic process. Interference is not noise. Noise is random, interference is not. Interference can be mitigated. Shielding the guitar, using noise-cancelling pickups and accessories and other techniques can reduce interference to negligible levels. Sometimes it's easier to kill interference at the source, i.e. get rid of the old CRT monitor.

 

[rsf1977]

:?: what are the biggest culprits of noise in a passive guitars electronics? And are there any modifications that work to lower the general noise?

There are two types of "noise". One is thermal noise, the other is more correctly identified as interference.

Thermal noise (Johnson noise) is a function of resistance, temperature and bandwidth. The noise voltage is given by sqrt(4KTBR), where K is Boltzman's constant, T is temperature, B is bandwidth and R is resistance. Thermal noise is "white" and contributes "hiss".

There is little you can do to reduce thermal noise. You can use low impedance pickups but then your signal level drops too so the S/N ratio isn't improved. Active pickups can sometimes help if they use a good low-noise preamp. Since noise power is a function of bandwidth you can use a lowpass filter to reduce the noise.

Interference is hum, buzz and any other non-stochastic process. Interference is not noise. Noise is random, interference is not. Interference can be mitigated. Shielding the guitar, using noise-cancelling pickups and accessories and other techniques can reduce interference to negligible levels. Sometimes it's easier to kill interference at the source, i.e. get rid of the old CRT monitor.

Hey thanks Cliff, I think my apartment is just really creating alot of interference because as i open my volume pot on my guitar and just turn and move the noise goes up and down all over the place. I'm curious about the low pass filter idea? Can you expand on that?

Also would it make sense in the signal chain to place a PEQ first and kill all frequencies that offer little to nothing in a guitar's range to eliminate all noise on the extreme high and low end, basically a shelf on both at some point?

 

[rsf1977]

Just wanted to say I finally cranked my Ultra up at practice with no gate and the level of noise even on even high gain settings was almost non-existent. Nice piece of gear.