How to kill this Hum in my setup?

  • Thread starter Thread starter fjell_strom
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fjell_strom

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Right all, this is my first post. I just posted this in the guitars section without seeing that computers its own department here. I'm afraid I haven't got any amazing gear--and it might be easy enough to write "Get better gear", but I hope someone will offer other serious suggestions:

The setup: Stagg copycat Telecaster into a Behringer six channel Eurorack UB802 mixer. RCA jacks leading from the Tape Out of the Behringer end in a 1\8" headphones jack plug which is plugged into my computer sound card IN. The sound card is a brand new Audigy 2 ZS NOTEBOOK--I'm a laptop user. I had this same noise problem, however, in the last soundcard I owned, which was an external USB card.

The noise I'd like to eliminate sounds simply like a static-y hum. It sounds like something like television or radio interference, though none are around. What about the laptop's wireless lan card? Could this play in? If anyone has shoot-from-the-hip suggestions or wants to know more technical details, please let me know.

I appreciate any help on this,

Thanks, Dustin
 
The main problem is that you have single coil pickups in your guitar which will always give you that nasty buzzing. A noise gate would help a little. You should plug into a direct box and then into the mixer. Plugging directly into the mixer you will have a mismatched impedance which adds to the noise.
 
Believe it or not, try putting a ground lift adapter on the power cord for your laptop:)
 
xstatic said:
Believe it or not, try putting a ground lift adapter on the power cord for your laptop:)
Click to expand...

Thanks for the tips, boys. Will use. But...what's a ground lift adapter? (Probably something simple) :eek:
 
Take a few steps back from the computer and see if it's still buzzing - if it stops, you just discovered why they invented humbuckers ;)
 
A ground lift adapter is a really cheap little adapter that you put on the end of a power cord. It takes a 3 pole power cord and converts it to two poles. It could very well be the guitar, but I was under the inpression that LCD monitoring took care of that problem. I have had many laptops that buzzed badly on their outputs without the ground lift adapter:) of course it could always be the Behringer too. That wouldn't surprise me at all. Especially a behringer that is running unbalanced.
 
Yeah I'd say try lifting the ground.
Do it for both the mixer and the laptop. Though, most chargers I've seen for laptops are only two prong. If such is the case with your laptop and lifting the ground from the mixer doesn't help, do you still get the noise when running the laptop off of battery alone?
If none of that helps, it's possible that it's not a ground issue and you are just hearing the internal noise (noise floor) of your gear. Which could be getting attenuated via your method of gain structure.
You may do better by using a DI box between the guitar and mixer.
 
crankz1 said:
Though, most chargers I've seen for laptops are only two prong.
Click to expand...
Yup ... maybe standing in a bucket of water might help? :cool:
 
Ah ha! Now that I know what a ground lift adapter is...

I live in Germany, where everything is two prongs. :confused:

Still, perhaps a DI box.

cheers
 
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