Pickup the Radio?

[murraysp]

The otherday I was playing guitar and amazingly within my ramblings of music I hear the radio. I could hear with some amounts of fuzz a lady's voice reading the news. I found it absolutely amazing. This only occured on that day and only while i was facing a certain way. My room contains a lot of EM and this is often picked up by the amp but never a proper signal. Any ideas?

Regards,

Murraysp

[jrfrond]

This is a phenomenon called "Audio Rectification". The most likely cause is a dirty cable connector or other poor connection, even a bad solder connection in the audio path.

A dirty connection can form a crude diode, which when coupled to a high-gain audio circuit and a high RF area, can sometimes very efficient demodulate and amplify RF broadcasts.

Try applying some contact cleaner to each plug on your guitar cable and work it in and out of the jack on the amp and guitar to break up oxides that could potentially cause this phenomenon. However, don't keep chasing this ghost, because sometimes, there's no solution.

[Earl Norton]

Also be sure you don't have a speaker cable somewhere in the input chain.

[Gibsonman63]

My rig used to do this all the time 25 years ago when I was playing through a Little Big Muff and a 65 Bandmaster. When I got my Ibanez UE-300 and quit using the Little Big Muff, the problem went away.

I am still using that UE-300 BTW

That being said, you may want to look at what effects you have in your signal chain and as the guys have already pointed out, use good cables.