Howdy. First, I wanna thank Rod for some more research on e-fencing. The more info we have the better off we are. Also, welcome Dogbreath. Nice to have you aboard. Good to hear from you too bigtom. i thought maybe you gave up on us. Welcome back. And mshilarious, great to have you here as as well. I've got absolutely no clue what the Comunity of Civilian-Military Relations has to do with any of this, but I've gotta say that your ideas are some of the best we've heard yet. To my peanut sized mind, the best solution here would be to eliminate the interference at the very beginning of the electronic chain, before it creates any havoc, and a properly shielded, balanced signal chain would acomplish that in spades. Still, Adwaz has some good points here as well. In my case for instance, I have a whole bunch of guitars, most of them cheap, some even homemade, but each has a voice of it's own, and I would very much like to hear each and every one of those voices on my recordings. Rewire them all? Of course, I'd love to, but in my case, I simply couldn't afford, financially, to do that. I do commend you though on your efforts to enlighten those in the instrument building world, regarding the idea of balanced line systems for us pickers. Keep it up. One day, it'll happen. I guess I should also add that I for one was able to understand everything you said in your post, and saw not one flaw in your thinking. Anyone who has the need and ability to follow mshilarious's advise here, would be doing themselves a great favor.
That being said, I guess I should say this. Oddly, this thread seems to have become a sort of entity in it's own right. More precisely, two entities, and I suspect that it has become a bit awkward for some of our readers to access what exactly they want from it. It's been a great pleasure for me to be able to come here and speak among some very interesting, and even some great minds, regarding my tick, and I would very much like to keep the discussion going. It's my guess that others would agree, and I believe that we've hit on a topic that can be beneficial to a lot of musicians, regardless of what exactly is the cause of their EMI (Electro Magnetic Intereference) or RFI (Radio Frequency Interference) problems might be. For those who have an interest, I believe we're providing a usefull, if not valuable service here.
At the same time, an odd sort of phedobidomen has occured here. It seems that there has arisen a sort of following of "the woes of Zachary Grimes." All of my friends and family have begun to follow us here, and have expressed their desire to read the next segment of the story, despite the fact that most of them would guess that a Telecaster was a Ford product, discontinued in the 1960's. A woman I never even heard of before emailed me and told me that our little story here is the first thing her seventeen year old son has ever read without being told to. There have been a surprising number of e-mails from strangers, and I have no clue how they're getting my address, but as far as I'm concerned, it's all good. I've heard everything from "nonsense" to "hilarious", and from "interesting" to "assinine". The description "great read" has come up, for which I'm gratefull. So for me, it doesn't really matter how exactly we do some good here, whether it's to spread information regarding our electronic problems, or to maybe give someone a good laugh, or just to give someone somthing amusing to read "with their morning coffee". Good is good. Do it when ya can.
I believe that all of this is to the benifit of all; such as when my Uncle who is a contractor, and an absolute wizz at solving construction problems comes here, and one day may help someone to build a much better home studio, or,
when his wife, who is dying of LGD comes here and gets herself a laugh, well, that's just all the better. This experience has been nothing if not therapudic for me as well. You get my drift. So, I'm going to try to do my part to keep this thing going, and in order to make it a bit easier for people to come here and get what they want out of it, I'm going to try to do the following. I'm gonna put up headers in my posts. "The Woes of Zachary Grimes" will henceforth be headed as such, or perhaps as "TWOZG". Love it or hate it, take it or leave it, up to you entirely. The more serious posts regarding "Tick. Tick. Tick.", will be kept seperate, and under the header "TTT", because I am, if nothing else, incredibly %$#*ing lazy, and don't really want to type any more than I have to.
Now. All that being said, I suppose that I need to say somehing else, and before I say that, I must first say this. I was in a car that got creamed by a drunk driver all but twenty years ago, and recieved injuries to my spine that eventually manifested into a major problem. I wound up taking massive amounts of pain-meds in my effort to keep working, but this was a bad road to be on, and it very nearly killed me. Trying to work was just a bad joke. I went on disability. I finally found myself completely homebound in a powerchair. I'm 6 feet tall, but weighed only 120 pounds towards the end of this fiasco, huge dark circles under my eyes, teeth falling out. I looked in the mirror one day and saw a dead man, and decided to make a change. I kicked my addiction, "cold turkey" as they say, took what little money I had, and moved out to this old trailer that I've been telling you about. A lot of therapy has made me much more mobile; I can now be on my feet for about an hour a day without needing any prescription pain meds. I'll never go there again, even if it kills me. Throughout the majority of this downward spiral, I've been lucky enough to have the help of an amazing animal, a German Shepherd mix that I named Maggie. As I became more and more crippled, I taught her more and more how to do things for me, and her capacity to learn and help just never seemed to be exhausted. She doesn't just get my slippers, she'll get my work boots, dress boots, good sneakers, old ones. Mocasins. If I drop my cane, in a few seconds, she'll press the handle back into my palm. I don't even look down anymore. Professionaly trained service dogs have nothing on her. She allways knows where my keys are, and she's my body gaurd as well. I've been a chronic kidney stone former for the past 34 years or so, and when I have an episode, she knows it, because she can smell the minute amounts of blood in the toilet even after it's flushed. She has made it her business to monitor this, and when she detects a problem, she positions herself in between me and anyone else who might be in the room. You can scratch her head, and she'll wag her tail, but move towards me and she's on her feet, ready to intervene. She's also my biggest fan. I usually sit on the bed when I play, and she knows the sound of the catches on my Strat's case, and when she hears it opened, she positions herself in between me and my amp. My acoustic, she likes to be on my other side, and have her head directly under the lower lobe, up against my leg, and she'll lay there for hours, just listening. Throughout the past eight years, she's become a pretty big part of me, mostly I guess just for the fact that we've been in the same room, 24/7 and 365 for all of that time, (I was self employed before I was completely disabled.), with the exception of a handful of times when I was in the hospital. Tonight, my great good dog is herself, lying in the intensive care unit at a nearby Veterinary Teaching Hospital. She came down with a mysterious illness just two and a half weks ago, and went downhill from there, very fast, and unfortunatelly, very hard. They're telling me that they suspect a blood disorder, perhaps Cancer, and I've been told to hope for the best, but to expect the worst. Because she is a working dog, she's geting thr very best of care, there is a team of doctrs working to save her round the clock, bit there is no getting around the fact that her tim is short. A few months at best. I'm sure there are some out there who are saying, "Just a dog", and you're right, she is just a dog, in the larger scheme of things, but those of you who have owned, or do own dogs know how even the most pigiheaded canine pain in the ass can get under your skin. Steal your heart, and then hand it to yo o when they go.
This dog has done that for me, and now to me, and I have no idea at all, yet, how hard I'm gonna fall, only that I will. Fact is I'm pretty much falling apart right now. Because of my stone problem, I've been in debt for most of my life, and so I've never been able to even think about having kids of my own, and I guess that this has served to increase my attachment to this animal. She's so nearly human, for a dog, that she's become more than just a little part of our family. She is by far, the best friend I've ever had. I'm astounded at how much I miss her now, and painfully aware that I'll be missing her a very great deal more, very soon. What i don't know, is how exactly all of this is gonna effect me, or for how long.
So. I haven't told all of you this because I'm looking for sympathy about my rediculous life or the loss of my dog. I am banging on this keyboard because I can't sleep, but mainly, I'm telling all of you this, because of everything single other thing I've said in this post. I think that this thread has at least some small amount of value in this old world, for a variety of reasons, and I'd very much like to see it continue on. I know that others would as well, but the fact here is that my participation may be very limited for some time to come, given the present circumstances. The fact is that I fully expect to fall completely the $#@% apart here in the very near future, as I'm wavering on that line right now. So what I'm asking is that you guys keep it going for me for a while. I'll be watching, tossing in a word when I can, always eager to hear the next thought, the next idea, the next genius, and the next idiocy. There is no pride here, and there is no shame. No point is to deep or complex to be understood at least by some, and no point is too silly to be valid. Come one, come all.Tell us about your experiences with balanced lines and shielded cavities, electric fences, good practices, and bad goats. Think of "Tick.Tick.Tick." not as a, my single problem, but as a place for people to voice ideas about any and all interference problems, a place to learn how to make our studios sweetly silent, except for the sounds of our art. I believe that we've come a long way already, in doing just that. I'll pitch in when I can, but the fact is that we may not be hearing anymore of "TWOZG" for a while. Just don't have it in me right now, but Adwaz? You and mshilarious are off to a great start here. I'll be watching. keep it up! One day, I'll bounce back again. I have a way of doing that. Meantime, please. Let's hear more from all of you, tell us about your experiences with EMI, RFI, 60Hz AC hum, and pickups that go bump in the night, and more importantly, what you did about it. One day, i believe that mshilarious is right, we'll all be playing through balanced lines. But until then, if we all learn how to deal with all of these types of things, who knows, maybe we'll all know just what to do when we get out of bed one day, and our our $@%4- #$%ing amps go,
bzzz, gwaaaaang, buuuzzz, mmmmmm, shhhhhhhhhh, or even, Tick...Tick...Tick...
Rock on,
Zgrimes
This has been a great read for my first cup of coffee.
