How can I get rid of hum...?

[Kolstad]

Andy had some great advice, so what he said

It's important to differentiate at least, between hum, hiss and broadcast noise.

Hiss is white noise, and is high frequency, so there it helps to roll off highs and perhaps lower the output level of the guitar/amp or the input level of the recording device.

Hum comes in two types, both low frequency. One is about 120hz and is caused by power supply, (too) high currents ect. For that you can check the circuits in the guitar/amp, make sure they are good quality, and perhaps roll off some low end on the recording as a compensation effort.

The other type of hum is called 50/60hz hum, and comes from lack of grounding of some devices in your recording chain and/or cables that's crossing each other on the floor ect. Make sure at least one of the devices you are using have the power supply connected to ground (the third leg on the wallwart), and make sure your cables are not crossing other cables and that they are good quality cables with sufficient isolation. Counter-intuitively the thinner cables are usually the better ones with the solid isolation.

Hum problems are the worst and can be the hardest to localize and fix.

Broadband noise is the running noise from your computer, which clutters up in the low frequencies and can sometimes be confused with hum. Usually most troublesome when recording vocals in a project studio, but with guitars, you probbaly only get that if you're recording with a condenser/ribbon room mic. If so, make sure you know the pickup pattern on the mic and place it so the computer is in the "dead" zone of the pickup pattern, and/or throw a blanket on the computer when recording.

[waltergrund]

I think K-man has the idea.

they are single coil pickups, which are notoriously noisy and pick up interference from overhead lighting (esp fluorescent) and computer monitors among other things.

that's the whole reason why a lot of people use lightly wound humbuckers in a single coil slot, or ones like the Fender Noiseless series which I have on my american Deluxe strat.

The good news is, all of these alternatives cut down on hum.

the bad news is, they all doen't have quite the same snap and chime that authentic single coil pickups have.

Some people have also had good results by installing magnetic shielding tape in the cavities of the guitar where all the wiring is.

A good way to tell if its just the usual strat pickup noise is to go to in-between positions 2 and 4 on a 5 position switch (or finesse the selector switch so it sits in those positions if you have an older vintage style 3 way selector switch). the in-between positions are basically hum-cancelling but wired opposite of a traditional humbucker.

If the hum mostly goes away, its guitar and pickup related. change out the pickups and you might get rid of the problem.

there are lots out there:

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/nov98/a ... pickup.htm - yeah its old, but guitar tech is old too.

Thanks, Andy!
Yeah, it's both: the single-pickup and the surrounding; I did check with the Humbacker setting and it was better, but not as good as I wanted it.
Especially with my portable USB-interface and the overspeaking of click to audio and high hiss I thought:

How about USB-cables...? Can they be an open door for hum...?
The hum with distortion and Single-coils remain the same with my firewire-interface though (

Thank you all for your input, appreciate it!

Walter

[mazz]

You mentioned compression. Compression brings up low level signals, that's the point. If you are using a lot of compression then I'm not surprised that the noise level is high.

[elser]

Hmm.