Bad power. . .

[mingus2112]

I've got terrible power in my basement studio. Could be a grounding issue. Could be overloaded circuits. . .who knows. The real fact is that I rent. I won't be able to make any changes. I can live with that most of the time.

The PROBLEM is tracking guitar amps! Terrible buzz going on. No buzz when there's no load. Guitar pickup sheilding problem? I thought so too, but in other spaces they're as clean as can be. I have to turn and turn until I find a "quiet spot." Often this ends up in twisted wires and a bad performance due to movement restrictions. I know the issue is coming THROUGH the guitar, but i'm definately convinced it's because of the power. It even happens when all monitors, TVs, and lights are off in the house, so that rules them out.

Any hints? What about a power conditioner? Would one of those monster things that they sell for big screen TVs help at all? I'll try anything non-perminant at this point. Perferably something that will still be useful when I move and do the studio correctly.

-James

[RodC]

Could be a million things, I had one of those long life bulbs (florsent coil looking thing) must have a ballast in it, anywhoo it was on a circuit 30 ft away and it still gave me fits.

Try turning off all the breakers in your house one at at time (except the one you are useing) You may find one that does the trick. You may try an isolation transformer. I have one for repairing amps, sometimes a client will bring in a noisy old amp and this does the trick.

Do you get the noise with no guitar plugged in? Is it bad on all guitars? Do you have good shielding in the vol pot area of your guitar? The silver paint in some of them dont do the trick. If the back is plastic try putting a grounded piece of foil on to see if that quiets it down. If so, make yourself a metal shield.

[apropos of nothing]

Could be grounding issues.

Try having everything come off of only one AC-outlet. That's my standard policy now. Otherwise there's multiple paths to ground, which could potentially include me -- bad news.