Bad Buzz

[jjucius]

Hi
Ok dumb question. i have a fender hot rod deville and when i use it at home it sounds great but the last gig i played the amp buzzed so bad i allmost couldent here my guitar! when i got back home and tryed it it was fine so i figure it was the wiring at the bar we played at. i heard that if you use an adapter, the 2 prong type, and turn the plug around (change the phase) it will cure it. well i dont like not having a ground so my question, could i get a dpdt center off switch and wire it up so i can change the phase of the ac and mount it where my power switch is now? would that work so i can change the phase and keep my ground?
Thanks
Joe

[drewl]

Any neon lights on the same circuit? breaker box nearby?
One place we play the huge breaker panel is behind us and creates a nasty buzz on the one side of the stage, can't use single coils there at all.

[Enzo]

It takes proper wiring in the wall for the ground prong on your amp power cord to mean anything. I wouldn;t bother.

It could be the wiring, it could also be the electrical environment. The bar could have ancient dimmers on the lights making a racket, there copuld be noise electric motors on the line, who knows. One test is to turn on the amp with nothing plugged into the input jack. if it no longer makes noise, then the amp is not the problem.

[Chuck H]

This may seem like an insult... But are you sure you were using an instrument cable and not a speaker cable at the gig for your amps input???

Most amp features that perform polarity reversals have been abandoned by the MFG's. The only reason I can think of for this is that there is always going to be someone out there who will use an ungrounded extention cord or even break off the ground prong on their amp to plug it into an ungrounded wall socket. I once played a gig at a club that was such a dive that they had "some guy" replace all their old ungrounded stage outlets with three hole grounded outlets. But he didn't set up the grounds on all the outlets and even had some of them in reverse polarity from the others. I found this out with some private investigation after a serious shock. Point is, you can't be too careful, and I don't think optional polarities are even a good idea because "your" amp can't control all the possibilities. So there's a safety issue too.

If the hum was so loud that it interfered with your guitar sound from the amp, the problem wasn't the amp. It was more likely a mistaken cable or an outside em source that was profoundly effecting your gear for some reason.

Chuck