Noise seems to be every guitar player's nightmare. It can be buzz, hum, hiss, air-traffic control... (This Is Spinal Tap, anyone?)
...
I'll
Noise seems to be every guitar player's nightmare. It can be buzz, hum, hiss, air-traffic control... (This Is Spinal Tap, anyone?)
I'll start off by saying that guitar rigs are a noisy environment to begin with. Gain has a lot to do with noise, but if things are clean before it hits the gain stage, your rig can be quiet (er).
There are so many ways noise can get into your rig. It can be a tangled web. Sometimes noise is just a side effect of what we are trying to achieve, but eliminating noise before it gets amplified will lead to better results in the end.
Make sure your amp has a ground pin on the AC cable and your power source is properly wired and grounded. You can find an AC wiring tester at your local hardware shop for around $10. I carry one at all time. This will tell you if your power source is wired properly and that it is grounded. You really want everything grounded; you don't want to become the ground; that would be bad.
NOISE IN THE LIVE SETTING:
Most times when I'm on tour and having noise issues, it's because the house lighting rig is tied into the same power source as the back-line power. You can hear the lighting dimmers as noise in your amp. When the lights are on 100 percent, the noise goes away. This is poor planning on the venue's part.
I can't tell you how many times I had to make the local crew fix the issue when I was on tour with Lou Reed. He didn't like any extra noise, and who can blame him? In a perfect world, you would have a power source dedicated to back-line with no lighting dimmers plugged