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Lights and noise?


Ben Jamin
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Having a bit of a problem with buzzing in a venue I play at lot - not sure how to fix it! The lighting (it's a fairly big place) seems to make my bass pretty noisy! I play a USA G&L L2500. It's the same story, worse in some cases, with a few other bassists/guitarists who play there too. Standard, but quite big, par-can wash out front with LED bars behind. Only happens when the lights are on. The buzzing changes frequency/gets louder or quieter depending on which direction I face on the stage. When I run the pick-ups in series it's quite loud, but it's barely audible when I run them in parallel. When I used my Tech 21 Red Ripper (distortion pedal with buffered bypass) there was less noise when turned on than off!

I'm quite confused! It's not loud enough to be a massive concern but it's noticeable inbetween songs and in quieter moments etc so I'll just roll down the volume on my bass when not playing, which kills the noise - so the bass must be the starting point. Anyway, weird!

Any help would be much appreciated!

Cheers :)

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It sounds like you're picking up "air borne" interference from some component of the lighting system. Dimmers are often the main culprits for this kind of noise but I don't know if there will be dimmers in use at this venue.

There's not a lot you can do about this - the interference is in the air around you and picked up by your pickups. There's no fault with the pickups - that's what they do. When you run the pickups together they are probably working in "hum cancelling" mode, which is why the noise is reduced then. Single coil pickups are bad for this kind of thing - "humbuckers" were designed to reduce this sort of noise.

Anything that varies the gain of your signal will have an effect on this kind of noise - either increasing or decreasing it.

If it is this kind of noise then you'll often find that it varies as you turn the bass around so you might be able to move on stage (swivel around) until you find a spot where the noise is minimal.

It could be that some of the lighting components are badly positioned or not properly screened but its unlikely the venue will be interested in changing this.

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Dimmers that use Triacs can 'clip' the mains and either radiate a 50HZ buzz or cause mains borne interference.

If it is that its best tackled at source, but have you tried taking the mains for your amps from somewhere else in the building, using a long extension lead, or using a mains lead with suppression ?

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If the noise is constant no matter if you move around or move the bass then it might be passing along the mains cables, in which case plugging the amp into a different mains circuit might help.

If the noise varies when move the bass around or move to different locations in the room, then it is "airborne" interference or "Radio Frequency Interference" (RFI). The noise is in the air all around you so it won't make any difference plugging into a different mains circuit, or filtering the mains with a noise suppressor. In this case the noise is an electromagnetic field that is reaching the bass pickups through the air and not through a cable.

Shielding (screening) the control cavities of the bass may help a little, but you cannot effectively shield a single coil pickup, therefore noise will always come in through the pickup itself.

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Thanks for all the replies guys, you rock :)

It sounds like it's probably that RFI in the air then, as the noise changes quite a bit as I turn/move around the stage. There's no noise when the lighting is turned on and using power (without the faders up, so not emitting any light).

I'm playing there tomorrow night so I'll try a few things out re power supply and chat to the bloke in charge of the lighting :)

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