Room is humming

[g1]

SGM: Basically what you are saying is that you give up. You won't even try to help pinpoint where that "wad of romex" might be, if it is indeed the source.
So you are not the guy anyone would want to call for a service call on an issue like this.
As you well know, there are many musicians who will absolutely not use humbuckers, even if they are stacks. If you don't know this, then you must not deal with many musicians. So you are lost as far as helping them with noise problems. Talk about being stubborn.

If someone sent you out on a service call to deal with this issue, and this was your solution (without even trying to find the source), you would be fired. End of story.

Don't be afraid to admit you are beat on this one. It happens to all of us sometimes.

[km6xz]

Parallel or twisted power lines are not really much problem since there are two phased fields that tend to cancel, neither are transformers since the field is mostly contained and the field decays very quickly as you get further away. Unbalanced power lines, where one takes off to return to a switch box but another route to complete the circuit is an effective antenna. Toroid's are pretty much self-shielding.
Usually there is a fix or at least a significant reduction possible but the method of propagation and source need to be pin-pointed.
Power conditioners and other costly add-ons are primarily used to get money from frustrated musicians or small studio owners and do nothing for noise.
If you are sure it is magnetic(strong 60 hz component in the sound, along with buzz), make a loop antenna of 20 turns of wire strung around a x-frame or large format least 20 inches in diameter and connect that to your scope and you will have a directional antenna that can be used to radio-direction-find the source. If it is only a high frequency buzz you can build a voltage dual probe style antenna to.

A probe antenna can be used to connect to the feedback in the amp and cancel it out with a phasing control if the noise appears to be onmi-directional. Another way is a bit more complicated, but uses the noise blanker principle, where a very fast gate, mutes the signal chain on noise waveform spikes. It uses a sense antenna to sample the noise, which is detected and conditioned to clamp fast rise-time pulses. Sending those pulses through distortion stages or EQ, generates a great deal of products that would be hard to filter so the gate would have to be right at the first stage, before any nonlinear stages or phase shift stages(EQ), and certainly before any pedals or clippers. Pedals should be used in an effects loop if possible, better SNR by far, and not as a load on the guitar.

[daz]

One thing I've always been curious about and maybe someone can answer. When i turn around as some have already mentioned, my SC pickups will be loud thru my rotation till i hit that certain spot, then they are about as quiet as a HB. What exactly causes that quiet spot?

[Jazz P Bass]

Very basically, a right angle position to the field will place you in a null point of the field.

[bkahuna]

The problem IS the pickup.
IT'S time for you to BUY a humbucking pickup. These PUs will fit right into the guitar, without modifications or cutting.

This is not a viable solution for everyone. Humbuckers don't sound like single coils, and never will.

[soundguruman]

Yes, join the club.
The club of people who insist on using only single coil pickups.
And never stop complaining about the noise.

And for some reason, many of these people continue to believe that there is some magic method...
to stop the buzzing noise.
Of course, there isn't.
But you will keep on trying anyway.

The never ending futility of your struggle amuses me.

[DrGonz78]

Many times a guitarist will shield the inside cavities of the guitar and forget to connect the copper plating to ground. That will actually increase the hum if it is implemented incorrectly. I like both single coil and humbuckers. The more options the better for guitar sounds and tones.

[big_teee]

This is not a viable solution for everyone. Humbuckers don't sound like single coils, and never will.

That would be an interesting experiment to do the old blind taste test.
I make some low wound strat blades that you would have a hard time knowing whether the Single Coil was behind curtain #1, or Curtain #2.
Don't get me wrong, I like the sound of SCs as much as anyone, and I sell more SCs than Blades.
But, when someone orders them, I always make it clear that they will pickup hum, like a giant antenna, except in RWRP position 2 &4.
T

[ronh]

Heres my latest update. Using a spare Stratocaster pickup and a battery power amp, I turned off the main electrical breaker to the house. The noise/buzz was still there. So I took my pickup/amp to the breaker panel. Noise is there. On the other side of the panel is my smart meter. Below the meter is my cable tv entrance box. The noise was there when I put the pickup beside the meter and the cable tv cable. There maybe an old cable tv run in the wall of the bedroom. I will short this cable to ground. This should kill the noise in the room. As for the smart meter. I was told by hydro these things only transmit three times a day. The guy at hydro couldn't/wouldn't tell me about the power supply in the meter. Anyone have any ideas? Thanks for your replies.