Venues with lot of noisy lights etc....solutions?

[daz]

have a gig thats very noisy after they installed a TV over the stage and a bunch of lights and since then any guitar with single cold is horribly noisy. Is there any sort of power strip or something that has the ability to reduce that at all?

[xtian]

No. Even my humbuckers and noiseless Fishman single coils were picking up noise at a recent venue. A fancy power strip won't help at all, because your guitar's pickups are "hearing" the EMI.

[Tom Phillips]

First thing I would do is determine if the noise is getting in through the power connection or via RFI through the air.
Is the new noise level bad without the guitar plugged in?

[xtian]

But there is a solution. Build yourself a Faraday cage, earth it properly, and stand inside. Done.

[Justin Thomas]

Maybe build your own personal faraday cage & bring it with you...

Sorry, not much help.
Edit: dang. Xtian beat me to it.

Jusrin

[nosaj]

See if the venue will work with you when there's not a show. See if it's the tv or the lights, bring an outlet checker and check the grounds the tv an lights are plugged into.
nosaj

[tedmich]

At times a truly shielded guitar cable can help.
I've wired the braid/tape shield on a 2 conductor cable to an alligator clip and attach to the amp ground and float the shield on the guitars TS end.
Might be worth a try?
If you have a ton of FX cabling there may be no solution.

[Chuck H]

Chances are that the noise is getting into the pickups. Since single coils have been called out as noisy I think the answer to whether or not a power supply filter could help is "no". It's noise created by the new media elements being "picked up" by non humbucking pick ups. So...

The solution is low noise pickups or extreme shielding for your guitars. I've had reasonable success with shielding guitars to the extreme. Copper foil around even the pickup cavities and even wrapping copper foil over tape and then grounded around single coils. This last effort does change the HF tonal character of the pickup. Not as bad as you'd think though. I found it manageable on stage. Don't bother with grounded copper foil on top of the pickups though. This would seriously detriment information from the magnetized strings getting into the coil itself and alter tone/reduce output.

Another option is to just accept noisy. Noisy happens in the modern electrical world (and by modern I mean any time after about 1970) with high gain amps and rowdy guitars. In my own experience understanding the mechanism makes this concession easier and more rock and roll than fighting it with disproportionate effort.

[daz]

Another option is to just accept noisy. Noisy happens in the modern electrical world (and by modern I mean any time after about 1970) with high gain amps and rowdy guitars. In my own experience understanding the mechanism makes this concession easier and more rock and roll than fighting it with disproportionate effort.

Agreed. I just wanted to see if theres any solution to even help a bit. Now heres whats strange. We played there last nite and before we started i was talking to the owner about it and showed hin how noisy it is and we turned various things off t see if any of the were causing it. Things like not only lights but neon lights and nothing made a difference Now heres 2 weird things....one, I explained to him how humbuckers are quiet and single coils are noisy and showed him how noisy my strat was then plugged in my LP standard to show him how humbuckers are quiet. But when i plugged the LP in it was noisy ! And that thing is never noisy, yet it wasn't much better then my strat. Then he has some music gear he lets people use on their blues jam nights and one of them is a HSS strat, some off brand. So he got that out and the humbucker in the bridge was dead quiet ! I don.t get that at all. Same amp, cord but his was dead quiet and my LP was about 70% as noisy as my strat. He also brought out an amp which proceeded to be noisy as mine. Told him thats not it but he had to try it. Next weird thing is partway thru the night i noticed the noise was now just normal. Strat had the typical little amount of buzz and the LP was quiet. So something must have been getting into it thru the air. Maybe a radio tower or something, who knows. Anyways, not a big deal since it wasn't a problem soon after we started. But it does make me realy curious. Audio electronics is so bizarre sometimes.

[xtian]

His LP was quiet, yours was noisy. That's worth looking into; possibly bad or broken ground connection.

[daz]

His LP was quiet, yours was noisy. That's worth looking into; possibly bad or broken ground connection.

Nope, sure thats not it and like i said it's normally dead quiet. His isn't a LP by he way, as i said it's a HSS strat. Its only at this place and even not there after a time like i said. Could be his is just wired differently or whatever. I know it's not my gear because it never happens anywhere else and didn't even happen there till the last 2 times we played there but theres something going on there thats exaggerating any present noise a ton.

[Helmholtz]

Some general remarks:

- Guitar and PU shielding only helps with electric (as opposed to magnetic) interference fields. Electric interference fields are radiated by conductors carrying AC or switched voltage.
- Strings should be grounded to ground the player's body.
- Magnetic interference is directional and is produced by AC currents. It can only be lowered by the humbucking principle using 2 coils.
The hum-cancelling effect is noticeable but far from being perfect.
Hum suppression of a side-by-side humbucker is directional and typically lower than 16dB.(Zollner).
- A grounded nickel silver cover significantly improves electric shielding of a Gibson style humbucker (as intended by Seth Lover).
- Not all guitar cables provide full shield coverage.

[nosaj]

Nope, sure thats not it and like i said it's normally dead quiet. His isn't a LP by he way, as i said it's a HSS strat. Its only at this place and even not there after a time like i said. Could be his is just wired differently or whatever. I know it's not my gear because it never happens anywhere else and didn't even happen there till the last 2 times we played there but theres something going on there thats exaggerating any present noise a ton.

Didn't Enzo or someone have a tag Never think up reasons not to check something? Could it not be possible you have a ground that might have broke.

nosaj

[Chuck H]

Didn't Enzo or someone have a tag Never think up reasons not to check something? Could it not be possible you have a ground that might have broke.

nosaj

This ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

And... It could be that any such failure isn't as much consequence in other environments. Ergo, you haven't noticed it elsewhere. Never invent reasons to NOT check something that is in question.

Also, if it ISN'T a problem with your humbucking guitar there MAY be some problem with the power line. That another humbucking guitar didn't have the same trouble indicates otherwise though. But in real time it's still possible any AC line problem wasn't present at the exact moment that other guitar was plugged in. Coincidences like this absolutely do happen and it complicates troubleshooting.

There may be something operating on the power line in an adjacent building or relative to it's regulation that is intermittent and causes problems. I've seen this before too. Though I'm sorry to say there's no reasonable solution for it I know of.

[daz]

I'm not thinking up reasons. I'm using process of elimination and i know my gear and this is the ONLY place and ONLY time i have ever run across this issue with it, so i know it's some sort of outside source. Probably radio signals of some sort.