Amp noise and dealing with it

how are you powering the effects pedals? is there any difference between using mains & batteries? i only ask this because i used to use mains, and found that excessive background noise was being caused by a cheap mains adapter.

This might all be crap, but its what i've learnt over the years:

Pickups - Do you have single coil pickups? These are awful for picking up all kinds of noise. If the noise level changes when you move around wearing your geetar these are probably the problem. Humbuckers, surprisingly are Hum-Free!

Cables / Leads - Shit ones do sound shit, try and go for higher quality cables. If you've wired/fixed any yourself double check and make sure they're still okay. Always cover the connections where the lead meets the jack as best you can and avoid running them over or near any power/electric cables.

Amps - Not usually a problem, but i've played loads of older vintage amps that just arn't earthed properly, which i think is quite dangerous and causes 50Hz Hum (in the UK, i think you have a different frequency). If the noises level changes when you touch a metal part of your guitar/amp/pedal/lead, its an earthing problem.

Guitar - Check the jack socket on your guitar, these can get dirty and even on high end guitars the connections are often quite crappy.

Pedals - The only way to test this is to try each pedal one at a time, infact you should start with just amp+guitar then build your way up to see if theres a sudden increase in noise anywhere. Some pedals don't like batteries, some don't like adapters, some only work well with the supply from the manufacturer.

The Boss noise pedals are quite good, these are the only ones i've ever used, i find it does usually effect the tone slightly, but then again, all pedals do.

If you want super clean-ness, you'll probably have to go for a solid state amp (tube amps are usually noisier, except the real high end ones i guess). The "modelling amps" are very very clean, and have built in noise reduction which you can control, and lots of on-board nice sounding effects and things, so you could probably get away with using a few less pedals. But they're not very cool.

You have to go about amp noise elimination systematically, and this means trying all the things that TomB suggests, and borrowing stuff from other guitarists to try to figure where in the signal chain the problem lies. There are also certain enviromental factors that can cause noise, like flourescent lighting, computer monitors, or radio station towers or power lines in the area. The quality of the power coming out of the wall has an effect as well.

If amp noise really bothers you, you will need to be sure that your guitar is properly shielded and otherwise in perfect working order, only use extremely high quality cords and effects, and consider an amplifier with an effects loop.

A good noise gate will not affect the sound from the guitar, but will cost more than a Boss pedal and, if you don't set it properly, might clip off the beginning and end of the note. In general, though, I think most people care too much about amp noise, which isn't really a problem unless you're in the studio.

Are you running the delay in front of the amp or in the effects send/return? If you have effects loop, I'd try splitting the delay and harmony pedal to there.

You might want to check if your pedals have true bypass or just an on/off switch. If it doesn't have true bypass, the signal is still running through the pedal's electronics when the effect is turned off and this can add some noise to the signal.

There are also noise supressor pedals out there for cleaning up this very thing. My old guitarist had a big pedal board and he used one of the Boss ones on the end of his effects loop chain.

What noise suppressor pedals do you recommend? Which modelling amps? Isn't a solid-state just any amp that's not a tube amp?

i've never heard anyone get a good sound from a modeling amp. ever.

How much noise are you getting?! Do you use a hell of a lot of FX? Is it mainly noise when the FX are running? Or all the time?

Yeah, a solid state is just a tubeless amp, it might just be me, but i've always found them on the quieter side, but then again, I haven't played through many modern tube amps.

The Line6 range of modelling amps are nice from what I've heard, haven't been in the guitar-gear loop for a while, best to try some out in a store, see what you like. Single coils *will* pick up a fair amount of noise, especially in a gig environment.

Re: Modelling Amps

A "good" sound? It really depends on what sort of sound you're after, personally, i'm not a fan either, but i've played in pop covers bands (i needed money!) and that sort of thing in the past where the Line6 Pod has been perfect, can switch from a jangly sound to shred monster in a second and it all sounds like its taken from the CD. If you know what you're doing you can pretty much any sound you want, apart from sounds that are dependent on strange room resonances/weird speaker combos/specific distortion pedals and the like (see Albini or someone).

How do y'all feel about the ol' ground-lift trick?

What is that?

Thanks very much for your help so far. OK, yes, the noise level changes dramatically when I touch any metal part of the guitar so this suggests a grounding problem with the amp? Also that I might electrocute myself or set the apartment on fire? Makes sense since the cable on that's kinda shot. And you're right about the noise level with my Tele knockoff (single-coil of course).

But, yeah, I get sick noise for real. All the time, worse with pedals, bad enough even on the hollowbody but worse with the sub-Tele. I frequently use 5 pedals (some second-hand) in series and have usually done so with the sub-Tele with preparations, alternate tunings, etc. So I realize this might pose a special problem, especially since I do a lot of really low-level subtle 'noise' stuff (think along the lines of Derek Bailey's quieter parts) juxtaposed with really loud things and pure silence. Amp noise can become extremely problematic in these cases. But I don't think it's overly precious to not want the guitar to produce way more ambient noise than any other instrument. There's a gig from the summer I can't even bear to listen to because the amp hum is so distracting.

Even the guy in the store, though, when he ran a real Tele into the Marshall he was showing me with compression and delay in the effects loop, he was getting mental noise levels. Is there really no way to play this type of guitar without this?

I've really spent the money on top-of-the-line patch cords, believe me.

By the way, do noise suppressor pedals distinguish at all between amp hum and, say, fret noise or low-level distortion that I might actually want?

So the plan of attack is shaping up to be: get a good clean amp with an effects loop, get a noise suppressor pedal, maybe upgrade the older pedals. Shit, this stuff gets pricey just to avoid a shitty hum sound.

Has Albini written about this? I couldn't find much on the Net that seemed very helpful (i.e. that wasn't either commercial ad copy or fanboy gushing).

By the way, that summer gig wasn't even with my own amp so it may well be a combo of the single-coil and the number of pedals.

Has anyone tried a keyboard amp with a mic?

(And, yes, I probably am the most high-maintenance musician I know. Maybe not counting harp players.)

Have you tried putting a noise gate or a volume pedal at the beginning of the signal chain? (IE just after the guitar)

A couple of guitar-playing friends of the "amp modeller = no good tones" tendency have recently bought & praised the Vox modeller that came out recently. Tonelab, is it called? I haven't tried it myself.

I have a Yamaha DG-Stomp amp modeller, that I remain very pleased w/, though I almost always use clean tones w/chorus, phase &/or delay, almost never high-gain, so I don't get much noise anyway, esp w/the daisy rock's mighty humbucking pickups.

I'd take the whole setup with guitars, pedals and amp to a store or amp/guitar tech and try different combinations to fix the problem. They should be able to help isolate the problem and you will be able to try different things in your setup to make it work.

It's hard to specifically pinpoint noise problems without precisely knowing the signal chain from guitar to amp. An old poorly maintained amplifer can develop noise. They can come with noise included due to poor placement of wiring, old capacitors, worn tubes.

Noise gate pedals have always worked well for me. Fifteen years ago I used the Scholz Rockmodule's SmartGate whch was decidedly easy to set. I do believe Dunlop/MXR now makes something very much like it as a standalone pedal.

Now I use a BlackBox Oxygen compressor with a built-in settable gate that works pretty much the same way. I don't use it on everything but it's efficient. It takes some finessing with your style to set so that it doesn't clamp things off. And to answer your question, yes, gates can be used in conjunction with a style that incorporates ambient noises from the guitar that you want to preserve at the expense of hum. It becomes a matter of finely aligning the compression that comes from your pedals, guitar and amp with the threshold of the gate.

The BlackBox is expensive but its primary purpose is as a compressor, so you wouldn't buy it just for its gate. The Dunlop/MXR Smartgate was much cheaper. There are also probably a bunch of other mass market noise gates that are somewhat cheaper still.

Generally speaking, all the amp modellers come with noise gates. My Pod XT and Adrenalinn 2 have them. Amp modellers are just as noisy as high gain amps on the tones or digital effects box chains used in them making the use of a gate helpful, just as with analog equipment.

Some cheap stuff that probably works very well.

http://www.zzounds.com/cat--Guitar-Noise-Gate--2626

Thanks for the help dudes. I went out and got me a new pretty wine-red Traynor amp and a noise suppressor today (early Xmas presents from Mom). I'm much happier with them so far. There's still a bit of ground noise which leads me to wonder if there's something up with my power bar. Still, I've never heard my guitars sound so clean through an amp before.

The Vox Valvetronix modelling amps are fantastic. The only modelling amps that sound decent. Not exactly cheap, but they really do deliver the goods.

And just under a week later, I'm freaking out again over how much amp noise interferes with harmonics run through a harmonizer (although it surely sounds better than my old amp). I'm willing to consider that I should get my guitar set up and my pedals looked into as well.

Maybe I'm just being too much of an audiophile about this. In my heart I know I might not be happy until I can get digital sound quality. How does Annette Krebs do it? (By not using amps and investing in a quadrophonic PA system and mixing board I guess.)

hey sundar you probably know this, but just in case: if you use a lot of pedals, running them in one long signal chain is much noisier than running seperate effects loops

A couple hours of experimentation yields this relatively satisfying solution: Guitar running straight into the mixer with a separate effects loop (including compression at near-zero sensitivity) on the mixer; mixer into the amp with noise suppressor on the effects loop on the amp; volume on the amp set way high with gain as low as possible; all EQs flatlined on the amp; lots of treble on the mixer. This seems to give quite a bit of power/volume with extremely clean synth-calibre sound and only a minor amount of hum (which only appears when I'm actually playing anyway). I'm sure you're all thrilled to hear about it.

You really should try some new pickups. If you don't want to put humbuckers in your tele you might try some lace sensors. They aren't the best pickups for "vintage tone" or "vibe" but they're quiet. I think if you're really concerned about noise and getting a lot of dynamic range then you're going to have to throw out a lot of the conventional wisdom surrounding guitar gear. A lot of the standard guitar player prejudices surrounding "tone" are based on high-gain distorted rock sounds that are probably incompatible with what you're trying to do.

Sounds like you're sorted, but short of replacing those old pickups there's legend told of how you might consider dipping them in paraffin. I can't see how, but some swear it does wonders.

i had a problem with a tele once, with the buzz stopping only when i touched metal parts of the guitar. See if you can get someone to look at the wiring in your guitarra, cos it could be that your pick-ups have gone microphonic.

Remember if you're going into a mixer, you'll get better results using some sort of DI box, unless you've got active pickups on your guitar (your guitar has a battery in it). They're pretty cheap.

dipping em in wax prevents microphonic squeeling which is caused by mechanical vibration of the wire windings in the pickup. the wax gets into all the secret crevases that you can't see from the outside, fills em up, and then solidifies so that they cant move around no mo.