Those damn neon signs!

[olddawg]

My fond congratulations on that. Great idea!!

Like this.. there's a bunch to choose from on Amazon.

[bob p]

I wasn't kidding about the Farady cage. A grounded screen between you and the neon sign should help, even with P-90s.

[Chuck H]

Here's a stupid, crazy idea... (read on at your own risk )

Build a neon dummy sign. Multiple tubes that can be added or omitted. Run it in opposing phase. plug it in as close to the offending sign/s as possible. Add or subtract tubes until you have the quietest configuration.

[R.G.]

It is a good idea in many ways. However, if it's the RF bursts that are doing most of the buzzy-hum, it may not help. The radiated RF doesn't come out with a phase related to the AC power line phase it started with, down at the micro-level of the RF. It may well be that either phase of the new dummy tube just increases the hum a little.

[Mick Bailey]

I've been experimenting with noise reduction circuits lately and maybe there lies a fix (though not a cure). My setup for inducing hum is a circular fluorescent light centred over a G&L MFD single-coil pickup in a Telecaster. I can completely eliminate all noise, even hands-off using various circuits such as 'hard' noise gates and downward expansion. There are pros and cons to all of these but the NE570 circuit I'm working on right now is working fairly well and has some promise. I haven't any experience of the HUSH pedals, nor the Decimator but they may be something to try. The Decimator in particular has a good reputation.

The main problem with most noise reduction pedals is they don't remove noise when playing and if the signal content has a high proportion of noise it's very noticeable. There's an older dynamic noise reduction IC, the LM1894 that was used in an Ibanez pedal to 'remove' noise from the signal and the demos I've heard are quite good (more for hiss though than hum/buzz). There are also intelligent systems that sample the noise floor and digitally remove it from the signal.

[J M Fahey]

i did a couple of articles on gigs on generators for premier guitar a ways back. I think they still have them on line. Od is right - you have to be really careful with grounds. If it were me, i'd take a multimeter and a plug/outlet tester with me to verify 120vac +/-10% before plugging an amp in. Well, actually, i wouldn't. I'd go to ebay and buy a used 1kw constant voltage transformer of the "harmonic neutralized" type to power all of my gear, and drive my own ground rod by the stage.

For radiated buzz, the recipe is some variant of
(1) shield your guitar cavity with copper foil or tape, spot-soldered into a complete shell.
(2) put some work in to getting immaculate cables.
(3) properly ground your guitar amp >> for rf pickup issues <<. This is different from grounding for low power line hum. Fluorescents and neons both spray out a burst of rf 120 times a second. The hum is a buzzy one. The rf is received by the antennas (that's you, your guitar, your cables, and your amps) and finds its way to an input pin, where it's am detected down to blips at the 120hz rate. Intercept it as rf, and you stop the rest.
(3a) check your input and output jacks. If they're loose, rf crreps in. Take the in and out jacks off the chassis, buff the area under the jack bushing down to bare, shiny metal, then reinstall and tighten the bushing nuts properly. This one step can be magic sometimes.
(3b) if you have isolated input jacks, put a toothed ring terminal under the isolating input jack sleeve, then run a 10pf to 100pf >>ceramic<< disk capacitor from the cable/jack ground terminal to the ring terminal. This bleeds rf into the shield-y chassis.
(3c) put a ferrite bead and a 100r to 1k resistor in series with the signal lead over to the first stage, preferably right at the tube socket pin. The rf has an easy path to the shield through the bypass cap and a hard and dissipative one to the sensitive input.
(3d) when treating inputs, never forget that the reverb return is a high gain input too.

************* please make this one post a sticky. Not kidding. ***************

[J M Fahey]

Here's a stupid, crazy idea... (read on at your own risk )

Build a neon dummy sign. Multiple tubes that can be added or omitted. Run it in opposing phase. plug it in as close to the offending sign/s as possible. Add or subtract tubes until you have the quietest configuration.

Sadly it won´t work, gas discharge noise is random in all aspects: frequency, phase, amplitude, no way two such noise sources can cancel each other. Sorry

[Justin Thomas]

Sadly it won´t work...

Aw, c'mon Juan! I'd love to see the guitar player at every gig plugging in and removing various bits and pieces from some monstrous breadboard during a gig. This is one of those "well, don't ask US, try it and see!" moments! And, as you know, someone out there will try it anyway, just like they try swapping the output transformer every time the forget to turn their amp to "play" mode because they think their amp blew up...

Justin

[Justin Thomas]

Here's a stupid, crazy idea... (read on at your own risk )

Build a neon dummy sign. Multiple tubes that can be added or omitted. Run it in opposing phase. plug it in as close to the offending sign/s as possible. Add or subtract tubes until you have the quietest configuration.

Chuck,

That'd make one heck of a great-looking humdinger! Forget Juan, I think you should build it anyway!
"If you build it, it will hum..."

Justin

[olddawg]

There's another local band here that I cross paths with a few times a year. The vocalist/guitarist also owns the largest Harley franchise in the county. He's got lots of money. Before every gig he has a guitar tech set up his at least $35k in vintage LPs, Strats, and Teles with a laptop computer (I use a TU2 on my pedal board like most sensible people) for the same low tier gigs I'm at, lol. I have no idea what the tech is doing on that laptop. It doesn't seem to help the band much. If they sounded like they looked it would be a start, lol. I guess perception is everything.

[R.G.]

Hmmmm. Here's a thought. I wonder why I've never seen a band fire up a really impressive Jacob's Ladder.

[The Dude]

There's a Spinal Tap skit in the making.

[jmaf]

I thought 7 to 15 kV neons were gone forever. I tried to buy a neon transformer for a Tesla coil and drove all around town until I found one at a junkyard.

120 Hz wavelength is 2500 kilometers. You can't shield that pesky RF, it finds its way into everything. Unless you're from the 1980's when playing inside Faraday cages was still in fashion.

[SoulFetish]

I did a couple of articles on gigs on generators for Premier Guitar a ways back. I think they still have them on line. OD is right - you have to be really careful with grounds. If it were me, I'd take a multimeter and a plug/outlet tester with me to verify 120Vac +/-10% before plugging an amp in. Well, actually, I wouldn't. I'd go to ebay and buy a used 1kW constant voltage transformer of the "harmonic neutralized" type to power all of my gear, and drive my own ground rod by the stage..

These Transformers have their own panel breaker?

[Chuck H]

I thought 7 to 15 kV neons were gone forever. I tried to buy a neon transformer for a Tesla coil and drove all around town until I found one at a junkyard.

120 Hz wavelength is 2500 kilometers. You can't shield that pesky RF, it finds its way into everything. Unless you're from the 1980's when playing inside Faraday cages was still in fashion.

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You managed to attach two (of maybe ten guitarists) from the 80's worth noting