true tone hum

Cody Russell · From: Arkansas, now in Denver

Now I know that the single coil pickups hum quite a bit, but last night in the middle of my set my Carter pro began humming so loud that the sound man thought it was coming from the PA. It has always hummed a bit, but this was much louder. To the point where I couldn't play it. I plugged it in at home, Carter direct into my steel king and same thing. I tried another amp and same issue. Any ideas on what could be the problem? I gig alot and need to get this problem resolved. I'm dying here because I just got my tone creamy and sweet with my Mesa Studio Pre and the SK and now this. But that's another topic! Thanks, Cody
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carter pro, 66 twin revrerb, steel king, tut taylor dobro, gibson rb 250

Bob Hoffnar · From: Austin, Tx

Sounds like you need to check your output jack /pickup selector solder points. Something is most likely not connected right. Those True Tones sound great and shouldn't be causing that problem.
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Bob

Lee Baucum · From: McAllen, Texas (Extreme South) The Final Frontier

Could it be a ground loop caused by using both the Mesa and the Fender?

Bob Hoffnar · From: Austin, Tx

Lee, That wouldn't be it:

Jack Stoner · From: Kansas City, MO

Have you tried different guitar cords?

Cody Russell · From: Arkansas, now in Denver

I haven't found the problem but it's not doing it anymore. It still hums a bit with the whole rig plugged in, but I think that is to be expected. It just stopped all of a sudden at my apartment and has been fine since. I'm considering the purchase of the EH Hum Debugger in case it happens again I can at least fix it for the show and you never can tell what your gonna get at a new club with neons and all. The strang thing is that this was my hometown club in a spot that I've sat and played at least 50 times before with this rig. After I put this post up I read the one about the EH Debugger and it sounds promising. It still hums, but not so much that I can't play it.
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carter pro, 66 twin revrerb, steel king, tut taylor dobro, gibson rb 250

Dave Mudgett · From: Central Pennsylvania and Gallatin, Tennessee

It certainly could be a connection problem with wiring in a switch, pickup, or cable as Bob H. suggests. The fact that it went away could possibly mean there's some kind of intermittent problem. The fact that it did this both at the club and home makes me think that it's more likely something with the rig and not just the club electromagnetic noise level, but that's not certain.

I second Jack's advice to check guitar cords, in fact before you start pulling guitar or amp wiring apart - it's the easiest possible thing to fix. When the noise went away, were you using the same cables, hooked up exactly the same way? I would go through every cable in a very organized way, hooked directly from the guitar to amp, to see if I have a problem cable. For any cable that seems OK, wiggle the cable near the jacks and see if anything happens. I would also unscrew the jacks and visually inspect the (presumably soldered) connections. This all just takes a couple of minutes per cable.

One thing that I see happen occasionally is that a speaker cable somehow gets mixed in with guitar cables. Speaker cables are unshielded, and attract a great deal of noise. Perhaps unlikely, but then again, what you're describing is not "normal" either.

Jack Stoner · From: Kansas City, MO

To go a step further, plug a known good guitar cord from the guitar directly to the amplifier input. Don't have anything else connected and see if you get the hum.

Then if there is no hum, start adding one piece of equipment that you use in line between the guitar and the amp. If it's OK, then add another, etc to try and isolate what is causing the hum or the intermittent hum. Also as you use additional guitar cords, wiggle each cord at the connector ends to see if there is a problem there.

Things that mysteriously come and go are hard to find, but eventually you'll come across what it is.

Tony Prior · From: Charlotte NC

Single Coils ( SC) do very odd things. You my be fixing the symptom, not the cause. To me what you are experiencing is the SC reaction to it's surroundings. A bit of audible noise is one thing but if the HUM is louder than the Music, it ain't the Steel or the Guitar chord, the SC is reporting back what it is picking up.

I had a pair of TT SC's on my Carter, it sounded great , until I got to ONE room. How about this, in that room , I changed STEELS ! Brought the Emmons with SC's. Same deal. More HUM than music. Large stage, Fans, Lights all that sort of stuff...

Now my Carter has a GL E66 on the E9th and a GL Eon on the C6th. If Single Coils are making you think, think Telecaster ( noise) at the same time.

I had a very long discussion with Jerry Wallace on this subject and he told me that there are just some area's that the SC's just cannot be used.

Cody Russell · From: Arkansas, now in Denver

The next gig I played it humed pretty bad, but not as bad as the last. I went to a great music store I know of in Springfield while on the road and tried the EH hum debugger. Wow, what a difference. Killed all the hum and no noticable change in tone to my ears. Went to play the gig that night and we all know what happened. Yep, no hum(w/out pedal!)...I mean zilch, nada, none. I didn't even have to use the pedal that night. Did some studio work the next day and used my Mesa direct. Hummmmm. I was really glad I had the pedal then. I have tried all combination of cords and amps. It's the pickup. Nothing wrong with the jack. I've inspected it. I realize that the pedal has just fixed the symptom, but at least it's fixed that. I seems worse now than I remember the last 6 months that I've had it, but maybe I'm just noticing it. Who knows, I can't do without the guitar for a week, I gig every weekend and I don't even know another steel player in my town to borrow one from, so I guess I'll live with the pedal for now. THe EH hum debugger works! Thanks for all the input. Maybe one day I'll be able to afford to try a different pickup.
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carter pro, 66 twin revrerb, steel king, tut taylor dobro, gibson rb 250

Jim Sliff · From: Lawndale California, USA

John Groover McDuffie · From: LA California, USA

Regarding Jim's post above: there is one advantage that a "spanish" guitar player has over a PSG player when it comes to dealing with buzz and hum problems, and that is the ability to move around easily and find the plane of orientation where the noise is the least. (There will usually be one.) It's very hard at best to do that with a pedal steel, and you can only re-orient your guitar in one of the three known spatial dimensions (or more accurately around only one of the three spatial axises) - unless you have studied with Rusty Young, that is. Also, milking notes with a volume pedal is a core part of steel guitar technique much more than it is for standard guitar, and when the notes are dying away and the volume pedal is floored that is when the noise problems are going to be the most noticeable. (A lead player usually doesn't spend a lot of time with the volume maxxed and playing with a very light touch.)

Those are the reasons why I am much more likely to take my tele with single coils to a club gig than I am to take my old MSA with the original single coil, although I love the sound of the MSA with all it's brightness.

Regarding hum eliminator boxes, I know they can be great for eliminating ground loops that can cause amps to hum, but the hum and buzz one gets from a single coil pickup is not caused by ground loops, but by electromagnetic fields in space inducting current in the pickup itself. I would be very surprised if a hum eliminator like the Ebtech will do anything to reduce an EMF hum problem.

Of course if you are talking about dynamic gating type noise reduction such as the Rocktron Hush family or a Boss noise suppressor, that is a different story. But a device of that type isn't that great for PSG because you either have to set the threshold so high that it will clip the tail of your notes, or else set it lower and don't realize any noise reduction until you are finished playing. A volume pedal used attentively will IMHO do as much good as a noise suppressor.

I have been meaning to ask Jerry Wallace if he does anything to his rewinds to make them quieter than the average (or below average) single coil - but the fact is that single coils are susceptible to noise.

Donny Hinson · From: Glen Burnie, Md. U.S.A.

John Groover McDuffie · From: LA California, USA

Cody, I don't know what kind of rig you are using, but if you are using two amps, or use an AC powered effects unit with your amp, or use a rack system with two or more electronic devices (such as a preamp, power amp, and effects unit), or have a DI line connected from your amp to the PA, you could be getting a ground loop hum and not a EMF hum from your pickup. Make sure that the hum is not present without the steel plugged in. If you have a guitar (standard or steel) with a good quality humbucking pickup plug that in instead of the steel and see if you still have the hum. If so, you will need to spend some time trouble shooting your rig, trying ground lifts on various devices, or using a transformer-isolating hum eliminator like the Ebtech.

Also note that many rack mount effects are powered by "wall wart" supplies, and the transformers in those can induce hum into your rack gear if they are mounted near the electronic components. In my studio effects rack I had to move the power supply for my MIDIverb out of the rack and some distance away to get rid of the hum.

Cody Russell · From: Arkansas, now in Denver

I've tried most all of these things. When I plug my tuner direct into my guitar. It shows the key of B. It was so bad at one club last weekend that the tuner was useless. The tuner could not pick up the "picked" notes long enough for me to tune it and it showed B for every string. Ya, crazy. I was most surprised to get this hum in the studio running direct from my Mesa. Like I said, the Eh hum debugger has helped tremendously, although at high volumes it tends to feed back at bit. But not so much that I can't deal with it.
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carter pro, 66 twin revrerb, steel king, tut taylor dobro, gibson rb 250

Tony Prior · From: Charlotte NC

EC can move around the stage with his 6 string Blackie and he can find a pure spot. His sound crew can set the stage up for him, in fact, I believe they BUILD the stage around his setup.

Showing up at a gig with a stage from HELL, a Steel guitar player can only do one thing. Sit there. Jerry's comments in my discussion pertained to the situation I was having with ONE room, and it turns out every other Steel player that plays or has played that room has gone to Humbuckers. In this one room I am referring to , our Teles were in serious trouble as well. I began bringing a Les Paul to the gigs.

There are some rooms where us weekend players will show up and be in big trouble with SC's on our Steels. We can argue about it and talk about it all day long , 24/7, but the fix was to put H'buckers on my Steel. This was a once a month $125 paying gig. we played this room for two years.

I love SC's, but I love NO NOISE even better. Smile

Joe Buczek · From: Montana, USA

We played a gig at a bar and my NashVille 112, usually quiet as a mouse, was humming badly at playing volume. Two sources of noise there drove my rig crazy: neon lights in the bar and the sound man's PA had an older power filter on it, the kind that dumps its AC noise back onto the common line. Next time we played there, I brought a new Furman PL8 II and the hum was gone.

Are you using a power conditioner?
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Joe Buczek
"My other steel is a dobro."
Williams S-10, Nashville 112

Ernest Cawby · From: Lake City, Florida, USA, R.I.P.

I had this problem one night in Quitman and bortrowed a Hum X from Ken Fox problem solved, after the gig Ken said where is my Hum X I said how much he said $49.00 I handed him the money and said buy you a new one, he laughed and put the mmoney in his pocket. It is now part of my traveling gear.

end of story

ernie

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