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The best way to eliminate hum on stage is with a power conditioner rack unit or power conditioner strip or hum-x plug.
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03-13-2016 06:27 PM
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Nope, that has nothing to do with it when using single coil pickups. The power conditioner doesn't come into play. It's the pickups acting as microphones picking up RF signals that is the culprit.
Originally Posted by Dave Wood
And the old guys just lived with the hum. That's the real answer.
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If it wasn't the pickup it was also the amp whining. Got a record of Tal farrows where the amp is whistling the whole way through.
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There is a slight change in tonal spectrum when the Humdebugger is activated. There are two intensities offered with the pedal. I've only used the lower setting since that gets rid of the hum for me.
I've used the Humdebugger with a RC 1100, P90s and a Kent Armstrong floating single coil. It works like a charm.
The tonal change from the pedal is not bad at all. It's just a little different. The pickups sound slightly cleaner.
I highly recommend the Humdebugger and wish I would have had one for my McCarty pickup.
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Grounding has nothing to the with the 60 cycle hum picked up by single coil pickups. That can be subdued to some extent by shielding such as on the Tele neck pickup and shielding done to cavities on other single coil guitars. But they will always be prone to some noise due to neon lights, TVs or poor wiring in a building.
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I wonder if the informative Mr Jonathon Stout has anything to offer on this subject?
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If you look at that Barney Kessel solo version of 'Shadow of your Smile' which is on youtube, you can hear he's getting some hum at the beginning, and it looks as if he fiddles with the controls a bit or turns the guitar slightly to try and reduce it. So I think (as jaz said) they basically tried to minimise it, then just put up with it.
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I wonder how it works ? Originally Posted by Marty Grass
I wonder if it works in the UK (50hz power) ?
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it works by generating an out of phase signal at the same frequency as the noise, thereby canceling the hum. The problem is that some of the pickup's tone gets canceled as well. I can't imagine spending thousands of dollars on an archtop and then running it through a device like this. You might as well be playing a cheapie IMO. Originally Posted by pingu
Just live with the hum after doing everything you can do to minimize it (i.e. good grounding, good shielding, good home wiring, avoidance of RF generators like neon and florescent bulbs, dimmer circuits, cell phones and wifi, etc. Think of the hum in the same way as breath sounds from a vocalist.
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Volume knobs work wonders...if you're not playing, turn down.
There's always a best place to stand/sit in relationship to the amp. Stand/sit there.
When you're in contact with the strings and the band is going, nobody will notice the hum.
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That's one way of thinking. Originally Posted by jzucker
Here's another. Why would I want to spoil the sound of a several thousand dollar archtop with an annoying, distracting hum?
I find the tone alteration of this pedal to be small and not unpleasant at all. It achieves the goal of the humbucker while truly retaining single coil qualities.
If 60 Hz hum bothers you enough that you are considering ditching the guitar, this pedal is worth a try.
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Because the hum is part of the original design. Filtering anything out of it is REMOVING tone. No external filter (pedal) can perfectly remove the hum without removing some of the "good" parts of the signal. The reason the coil-based hum cancelers work is because they are actually picking up the hum in the same frequency as the pickup whereas the pedals are guessing what to remove so they are less perfect. If the hum bothers you, get a humbucker but if you love P90 tone and are playing an old vintage guitar, using a hum-debugger changes the tone. It no longer sounds like the original tone. Originally Posted by Marty Grass
Whether you like it or not isn't the issue. It's different. If you don't notice the difference that's fine but it definitely changes the sound and to me the change is unacceptable unless you are playing a gig under a neon sign or some other extreme situation.
In home practicing cases (and I live in a 60 year old house with 2 prong outlets and knob and tube wiring) I'd rather turn the guitar down a tad and position the guitar in relationship to the amp rather than change the tone of the instrument.
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Different strokes, man.
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Well the pedal isn't guessing if it's echoing back the original signal, but I agree it does change the tone a tiny bit. The EHX HDB regular mode has a very minimal effect, the strong mode has a noticeable effect.
It would be great to just turn down or reposition to get rid of hum, but in both of my last houses that was impossible. I got a Godin Kingpin a few years back, plugged it in, and couldn't stand it. It was unplayable in any way, shape or form. I tried every position with the guitar, every room in the house, every outlet. In my current house I even bought a fairly expensive surge protector with a voltage filter. Didn't work.
Solid state acoustic amps are much noisier than tubes btw. The P90's and the Dearmond reissue are the worst among my SC guitars, the Fender Tele not bad at all.
Interestingly, I have not had much problem playing outside the house in clubs or restaurants. Just at home with old wiring and an NPR relay station nearby.
Bottom line for me: it might change the tone a tiny bit, but if the guitar is otherwise unplayable amplified, it's worth it.
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goes without saying. Just offering my opinion as are you. No need to qualify Originally Posted by Marty Grass
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It is though because it doesn't work by echoing back the original noise signal. It uses a technique of predetermined hum generation patterns which aren't as exact as using a dummy coil like the suhr single coil hum canceling system. Originally Posted by Doctor Jeff
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I had always thought it echoed back a low-amplitude version of the original signal like a humbucker or dummy coil, but I could be wrong.
I have been unable to find anything on the web that says exactly how it works, even from EHX--the best I can come up with is that it cancels out the frequencies normally involved with GL hum.
In any event, it works for me. At my present house which still has old wiring the only guitar I use it with is the Harmony with the DeArmond reissue.
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single coil pickups hum canceling systems Ilitch electronics
he could custom make one for you. Many people have tried them with strat pickups and all agree there's 0 tone change.
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I have a 69 Les Paul with P90s and a 1979 ES175CC and my house was built in 1938, even with power conditioners and Ebtech HumX it can sound like I'm listening to AM radio with the dial between stations. The only thing that lessens the hum is turning off lights in the house and moving the guitar/pickups to a spot that minimizes the hummmmmm.
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i doubt most folks would find it acceptable to route out a channel in the top for the antennae... Originally Posted by JazzMuzak
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Also, many noise sources causing us headaches today didn't exist then or weren't so plentiful: fluorescent or LED lights, dimmers, video screens, digital devices, etc. Originally Posted by vintagelove
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Dogmatic approaches tend to make the perfect the enemy of the good. If the hum is intolerable, do something it takes to fix it. If you don't mind the hum or consider it quaint somehow, then don't.
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Hello,
Some of you know I go crazy about CC equipped guitars. So I am frequently facing this hum issue when I am gigging. So far so good, no real problem until my last gig, two weeks ago. For some unknown reasons the hum was very prominent, although the sound engineer pretended everything was fine with his electrical installation.
I switched CC guitars during sound check and decided to play with my DS 250 and not my ES 150. This reduced the hum volume by half. For the rest, I had to find the sweet spot on stage that would cancel the hum. The hum was not dependent of the guitar position as regards the amp but exclusively related to the spot of the guitar on stage. I found the right spot, the right angle for my guitar neck and didn't move for the rest of the night.
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I didn't know LED bulbs emitted noisy RF? Originally Posted by KIRKP
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This is exactly what I do with my p90 archtop and it really works for me though I have to admit that I have never played an CC PU. My amp's are dead quit and if I turn down the guitars vol. to 5 or 6 I have a very quit signal path. Originally Posted by jzucker
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