Dealing with hum issues in certain places

[toneguy86]

Obviously this tends to come with the territory for those of us that play the bar gigs. It used to be a bigger problem and I honestly haven't really dealt with it at all since I bought my Lonestar. However, last night I played a place (not a bar actually--a big hall) and no matter what we did or where we plugged in, the hum was almost unbearable for my amp--especially with my P90 equiped PRS. It was definately a light related issue as we discovered but there was no way to keep some of the decorative lights on and eliminate it entirely. So...what are some ways to deal with this? Line conditioners?

Mark

 

[SonOfIAm]

There are a couple of products from Ebtech that may help, the HumX and the Hum Eliminator. The HumX plugs into the wall socket you are using for your amp and it's supposed to reduce any hum caused by ground loops or other wiring issues. The Hum Eliminator is supposed to quiet your gear by balancing the signal. If I'm not mistaken I thought I saw a Hum Eliminator in a picture of Andy Timmons rig.

http://www.ebtechaudio.com/products.html

Found the pic of Andy Timmons rig, the Hum Eliminator is in the 5th photo from the top:
http://forum.grailtone.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=29400&p=216497&hilit=andy+timmons+settings#p216497

 

[MrMarkIII]

Yep, it's the combination of single coil pickups and them pesky lighting fixtures, 'specially the ones with dimmer switches. I've had to use only the 2 and 4 positions on a Strat the whole night. Sometimes even humbuckers don't buck all the hum either. And once it helped if I stood perpendicular to the front of my amp.

 

[toneguy86]

Yep, it's the combination of single coil pickups and them pesky lighting fixtures, 'specially the ones with dimmer switches. I've had to use only the 2 and 4 positions on a Strat the whole night. Sometimes even humbuckers don't buck all the hum either. And once it helped if I stood perpendicular to the front of my amp.

I'll look into some of the products mentioned. It is definately worse with single coils. My guitar with P90s was almost unplayable at first and even with my LP w/humbuckers it was noticable. Interestingly back in the day before we knew better, the recommendation was to use one of those little 99cent ground lift adapters that would turn your 3 prong into a 2 prong (at least with the PA--my old Fender amps only had two prong power cords). With my old Fender Pro I used to get shocked off the microphone anyway lots of time until I switched the polarity switch. Getting shocked was the only way I knew I needed to change it. Man...there were times I couldn't feel my teeth or lips for few minutes.

Mark

 

[screamingdaisy]

There are a couple of products from Ebtech that may help, the HumX and the Hum Eliminator. The HumX plugs into the wall socket you are using for your amp and it's supposed to reduce any hum caused by ground loops or other wiring issues. The Hum Eliminator is supposed to quiet your gear by balancing the signal. If I'm not mistaken I thought I saw a Hum Eliminator in a picture of Andy Timmons rig.

http://www.ebtechaudio.com/products.html

Found the pic of Andy Timmons rig, the Hum Eliminator is in the 5th photo from the top:
http://forum.grailtone.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=29400&p=216497&hilit=andy+timmons+settings#p216497

The HumX is for breaking ground loops through the power cord, and the Hum Eliminator seen in Andy's rig is to isolate and prevent ground loops between the two amplfiers so they don't buzz like mad when plugged into his rack.

Chances are, what Toneguy86 is looking for is a power conditioner, like the Furman pictured at the top of Andy's rack. It'll filter the incoming AC current to help remove line noise caused by dirty power... like that cause by electric motors (refridgerators, air conditioners, etc) and lighting rigs.

That said, they only filter the power. If the noise is coming in through your pickups it won't fix that.

 

[SonOfIAm]

Just trying to help

 

[ja22y]

Hum is a common issue but quite hard to tame because you need to identify the cause of the hum.
Those power conditioners will not 'correct' or filter ac that has been chopped up by light dimmer or sources like that, they are just fancy surge protection power strips. In this case you would need to isolate your rig power from the house power. Look up isolation transformer.
Try the HumX, you should have one in your bag anyway, when ground loop is the problem.
I wouldn't use the 3 to 2 prongs for your amp since it's dangerous w/o the ground line. But you can use it to quickly test to see if the issue is in the ground.

 

[timmerel]

The Suhr Silent Single Coil Backplate seems to sort this out for most places, if your guitar can be fitted with it.