Is a certain amount of hum normal

[guitarchris76]

I just got my second Stiletto Ace. The first was retruned for a very loud hum coming from the speaker. The second one has the same hum but it is nowhere near as loud. It does not increase in volume when the amp volume or gain is turned up, and it does it even with everything unplugged. I think it may just be the fan being picked up by the speaker but I wanted to see if anyone else has experienced the same thing.

 

[groovebelly]

I do not have a Stiletto, but I have a few amps that hum. My Fuchs Blackjack hums at one level all the time, I too sent it back for revision and it improved, but it is still there. As the volume and treb are increased, the hum increases.

MY bivalve hums with higher gain as does my IIC+... probably normal

My tremoverb and maverick are relatively very quiet

I'm beginning to think that some hum is normal, especially with certain circuits...

 

[nitrous2400]

Well, every amp makes a little noise by itself, but a hum coming out of a speaker generally means you have a ground loop of some sort. You might want to try to unhook everything and run your amp just guitar into amp into cab. if theres a hum then its probably from a bad outlet or just your amp itself. If its quiet then start adding things and figure out what piece of gear is causing the noise. Try to power all your gear from the same outlet so everything shares the same ground path. But if you can't figure it out or its a noisy pickup you might want to try a noise suppressor. The Boss NS-2s kill a good amount of noise hum but not ground loop hum but they do cost some tone. For ground loop hum you'd want to look into getting a Ebtech hum eliminator which is a transformer that will isolate the grounds, and get rid of 60cycle hum.

 

[groovebelly]

hiss might be a better term for the sound that I hear that seems a little less benign than the "hum"

hiss usually, at least recently, has meant a bad pre amp tube

 

[Anonymous]

My amps hum when I have the guitar volume up and get close to the amp. Otherwise, they hum at really low levels. I do get a small amount of hiss, but that's to be expected I think....

Oddly enough, my Ecstasy is a little worse than my TR...

 

[Koreth]

How much noise my amp (A Nomad 100) makes depends on where it's plugged in. In my house, which was built in the 70s and has no grounds on any of the outlets, a slight hiss can be heard when the volume or grain is turned up. When plugging in elsewhere where the outlet is grounded, the amp has to have the gain and volume turned up to potentially ear damaging levels to get an appreciable hiss when idle. In the store, when it was being run off a voltage regulator/line filter thingy, it was dead quiet, even with the gain and volume up.

 

[Newysurfer]

All tube amps hum/hiss to varying degrees.
Should only be able to hear it when you're not playing.
If hiss bothers you it can be reduced by changing to low noise tubes.
Or you can run totally silent by using a GOOD noise suppressing pedal.
There's only 2 - ISP Noise Decimator or the MXR Smart Gate.
With my MXR Smart Gate in the Loop it eats 99.9% of all amp and pedal noise

 

[KH Guitar Freak]

Hissing could be due to bad preamps. However, if you crank the amp loud enough, there would be a very faint hiss. I've tried a Mesa SPAX7 preamp in the V1 position. That also helps reduce the hissing as well...

 

[Dolebludger]

For what it may be worth, my Nomad is totally silent in the "clean" channel with effects loop and guitar all plugged in. In channel 3 (the overdrive channel) there may be a little bit of noise, but not much, with everything plugged in, and a lot of gain dialed in. But I got much more noise in the overdrive channel of my former Mark III in the "lead" mode, As the entire "Mesa principle" is to build amps with a high gain factor -- which tends to create hum and noise -- it seems that Mesa has been more successful in ridding the amps of this noise in some models more than others. Can't speak to the Express as I have never played through one. But if it shares any technology with the Mark III, some noise or "hum" would be normal in the lead channel, especially if your guitar has single coil pickups.

 

[Dolebludger]

Hiss, hum, or what ever you want to call it -- I had some on Ch. 3 on my Nomad. One time it was particularly bad, and I discovered it was because a TV was turned on on the room! I bought some Dust Remover Spray and some DN5 Deoxit from radio shack for my re-tubing job, and was avvised to alo use the Dust remover to get the dust out of my female 1/4 jack plug-ins, and to use the Deoxit on the male jacks. The biggest "fix" was when I so treated the send and return FX jacks, and treating all other jacks in my FX loop, main input, and guitars solved the whole problem.

 

[MusicManJP6]

Hiss, hum, or what ever you want to call it -- I had some on Ch. 3 on my Nomad. One time it was particularly bad, and I discovered it was because a TV was turned on on the room! I bought some Dust Remover Spray and some DN5 Deoxit from radio shack for my re-tubing job, and was avvised to alo use the Dust remover to get the dust out of my female 1/4 jack plug-ins, and to use the Deoxit on the male jacks. The biggest "fix" was when I so treated the send and return FX jacks, and treating all other jacks in my FX loop, main input, and guitars solved the whole problem.

Interesting. I might see if my local Radio Shack has these two products. I don't have any noise issues, but it couldn't hurt!

 

[Dolebludger]

Yeah, I think I ran into the only guy in the world who works for Radio Shack who knows anything about sound. Indeed, he is one of those "audiophiles" who uses tube amps for his STEREO! The stuff also worked today on my PA system.