" Tick....tick....tick...."

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Okay. I'm building a home studio in an old mobile home cuz it's the only home I could afford so I figured this is where I'll build my home studio..... Ain't much, but it's mine, and I can tear the place apart, rewire and soundproof with no damn landlords screaming at me, so believe it or not, this is a step up, but there's a catch. I've got a very strange AC problem. When I plug into my guitar amps, ( an old Peavey SS unit, and a brand new Super Champ XD ) they emit a ticking sound. Best way to describe it, is that it sounds exactly like the discharge of static electricity when you rub yer shoes on a carpet, catch yer girlfriend, and touch her arm, but about 10 times louder. Kind of a cross between a snap and a click. Let's call it a "tick". It's very consistant at 55 bpm and can be auditioned by plugging in any of my 6 electric guitars equiped with single-coil pups, not so much from humbuckers, and not at all when I plug in my acoustic with an on-board pre. It's not loud enough to bother just about anyone who plays live, but it'll be a big problem during recording, which is the main reason I just bought the little SCXD......No. I'm nor wearing a watch, have no clock sitting in front of my pickups, and I believe that I've eluded anyone who might hate me enough to plant a bomb under my bed. There are no mice in my amps. I've tried every cord I own, bought a new one, moved the amps all over the trailer, and even took a giuitar and amp next door. tick...tick...tick. Had the wife put on rubber soled shoes, hold the XD in her arms, and balance on the bed. tick...tick...tick... There are three power lines crossing my property, and they're bare aluminum, no insulation and I'm told that they carry 30KV each, but the power company is baffled, and the guys at Fender gave it a shot, but finally wished me luck and said goodbye. A witch doctor just left here. He had a big hat with horns sticking out of it, and a big red rattle. He crushed an aspirin between two spoons, and poured it into my input jack. Put a bandaid over it. Shook his rattle at it. Then he looked at me and said. "ALL BETTER THREE RABBITS!!!"
I hope one of you guys has a better idea.....
 
Oh yea. Forgot to mention. I've had my amps plugged into a Pananmax, "Max 8 " power strip which has always done a good job filtering my AC for me, and I have that plugged into a Geek Squad Uninterupptable Power Supply (UPS) because we lose our juice a lot out here in the sticks, but I've tried all imaginable combinations with these units. tick...tick...tick
 
It takes at least four rabbits to fix something like that...
 
EDIT: I need to read better.

When you turn your body (while having the guitar strapped on) does the pitch or frequency of the tick change? Have any dimmers in your home?
 
Do you have any electric fences near by? The kind used for cattle or horses, maybe even the kind that you bury under ground to keep dogs in your yard. These kind of fences can wreak heck with electronics if they are shorted out somewhere.
 
good ideas, but no, the pitch/frequency doesn't change when I move my body around. It does of course get louder when I'm facing the amp. No dimmers, and while there are some electric fences around.....about 50 yards away, none of them are 'lit'. Good ideas though guys. Got anymore? Don't forget, there's a goat involved here........
 
I would think that maybe you aren't getting a good ground. Is there a way to beef up the grounding of the trailer? Sort of like beefing up engine grounding in a car with a metal strap... Just throwing out an idea.
 
am i right in thinking your running power from the house? (and dont use a generator or pto off mobile home) the mobile home has an engine i.e a van?

if so kill every bit of power going into the house.. at the fuse box (if you can)
so the only live source is going into your van...
if its stopped then its the "elimination round" restoring power to each circuit checking 1 at a time untill it starts again and finding the noise source within the problem cuicuit

if you got a fridge (full of beer;) ) or any other powered sources in the van, kill power to them all at source

if its still happening you could try sheilding one of your problem amps in in an old metal toolcase or aluminium foil (just for testing) to rule out "airborne" interference...

^^^ i know it sound daft,but its going to help track down the problem...

this er .. goat,is she wearing stockings? ;)


pmsl @ "WhiteStrat It takes at least four rabbits to fix something like that... ":D:D:D:D
 
....KAKED Kaked kaked. Where do I begin. First off, I think you've got some great ideas here, despite you're apparently complete lack of understanding regarding vehicles. I know. You're probably more concerned with the skyrocketing cost of poodle livers in South Aisa than you are about vans, mobile homes and the like, but just in case somebody actually REAds this stuff, I'm gonna go ahead and clear this up. Don't feel bad. First of all, your from the UK, so there's no reason you would need to know the American terminology, but most people don't know about the differences between trailers vs. mobiles etc. over here either. I only know cuz I happen to have at least one of everything, and I'm a new member of the ranks of "trailer trash." So here goes. Take it er leave it. We'll get back to your shielding ideas in a minute.

Let's go smallest to biggest. First ya gotcher basic car-hatchback-stationwagon types, and then ya move up to a mini-van, (think soccer Moms, and Danny Devito in Get Shorty) Then, ya have your basic cargo van, which is whatcha get to haul your crappy gear to yer first gig, when yer a teenager bound for ROCK GLORY. One of these vans with Captains Chairs and a cruddy little sink that smells like beer and vomit, is called a "conversion" van.
Next up, is what we call "motor homes", and they originally came in three classes: A,B and C. There is no class B anymore, and a class C is a cargo van chassis, most often with dual wheels in the rear, with the front end of the van intact, but everything behind the front seats is cut off and replaced with an aftermarket body, equipped with all of the comforts of home. We call these things "self-contained", because you can take a crap in them, and it doesn't land in the street, or stink up the (class C ) motorhome.
Class A motorhomes are like a poor-mans tour bus, the entire body is built from scratch, and are generally bigger than a class C. They too are self contained, have all the comforts of home, clog up the highways, and burn outragous amounts of fuel, especially when you put a car or a boat or anything heavy on a "trailer" (more on this in a moment) and drag it along behind you, which pisses everybody off cuz they think you're out there PLAYing when everybody else is trying to get to work. These people don't understand how serious some of us are about our partying and should shut the hell up.
Next up is the "Tour Bus", (Rock Star Bus) that started out in life as a commercial bus, (Greyhound, Trailways, Wolverine. "The day I took the Wolverine out of Anandale" [Steely Dan] ) and then converted by many different companies into asphalt palaces. They have everything, right up to but excluding swimming pools in them, and burn more fuel than.....Cleveland.
I do not now, nor will I ever own one of these, cuz.....they burn too much fuel......yea. That's it. They burn too much fuel.

So. That's the junk us Yanks run down the road. Next up, is the junk we live in, and that's a whole different deal. They're called "mobile homes", and if ya see one being pulled down the road by a truck, it'll have a big yellow sign on the back that say's "WIDE LOAD", (cuz they're about 13 feet wide), and they need a special permit to be hauled. (no engine in them). At 13 feet wide, they're called a "single-wide", and two of these units, designed to be fastened together on site, make up a "double-wide" mobile home (not motor-home). Just in case all this is not confusing enough, those of us who live in mobile homes, often refer to them as "trailers", as they were once all called, cuz they get pulled to where you want em to be, by a truck. The dealers started calling them mobile-homes, cuz it sounds better than "trailer", (...like custodial engineer ), but most of us still call em "trailers" cuz we're to lazy to say "Mooobile Hooome all the time. Once there though, they rarely get moved, which means that they burn no fuel at all, except for their furnaces, wood stoves, water heaters...ok. they still burn a lot of fuel, but not with a engine......

Still not confused? Okay. Let me try again. There are two single wide mobile homes on my property. I live in one, and plan to build my studio inside of it.
The other one I'm using for a barn, cuz it's not fit for human habitation. At least not now...

I know. It's rediculous.

So. Back to my #$&^# tick. Both of these single wide mobile homes (trailers), are connected to the same power pole, but the line is split at a second pole, providing a meter for each "trailer", (single wide mobile home).
So, these two mobile homes, (single wide "trailers"), are each connected to the grid exactly the same way that any other home is, and the wiring as well is exactly the same. One of the most confusing things about this "tick" issue is that the amps tick exactly the same in both trailers...(mobile ho...ok you get it. ) As Andy said, above, a ground issue may be causing my problem, but I'm more inclined to think that you, my man, are closer to the truth, and despite your complete ignorance about vansmotorhomestrailersandmobilehomes, your logic here was....eloquent. Excellent, even. However, I've already done an "elimination round", as you
suggested, to no avail. tick...tick...tick., and that leads me to exactly the same conclusion that you came to. A few days ago, I began to think about the idea of shielding my amp from the possible presence of EMI and/or RFI, and I was trying to figure out what kind of sheet metal might be up in my "barn", (which in reality is a singl.....never mind), that I could enclose it with.
The key thing here I believe though, will be to ground the shield, much the way our cable shields are grounded to our chassis. So far, this is the most encouraging course of action, and I appreciate your input, "seconding" my motion to shield. I agree, it does sound a bit daft, but your talking to a guy who just tried a witch doctor with a rattle, an aspirin, and a bandaid. Given that, shielding doesn't sound so daft at all.

Now. Regarding the goat......You sicksick sicky you.........aaaaaaahhh....YES!
She's wearing......aaaaaaah BLACK FISHNETS! Yea! That's the ticket ! .....and...aaaaahh the highest damn stillettos you ever saw and they REAly show off her..... fur... ok..this is goin' nowhere, but the offer stands. Anyone who solves my ticking problem will be the proud new owner of a very old goat.
As a bonus, I'll throw in a garter belt, or a bottle of A1 Steak Sauce. Yer choice......:)
Thanks to all for the help.
 
we in the uk have things that are big enough to be called "wide load",unfortunatley they are the arses of our fat girlfriends/mothers...

thanks for clearing up the misunderstanding on my part... and now i know that what you yanks call a "mobile home" we call "a large holiday home" or "a bungalow" (take a look at the lake district)...

damn im thick !!! i thought you were doing some mobile recording studio wotsit ..

unfortunatley i am un-versed in witchcraft practices and cannot comment further on the witchdoctors ill advised practises..

any photos of the goat ???

best of luck solving your problem !!!!

and after much deliberation,may i recomend five rabbits ???....

PMSL at your post.. rep on the way
 
Naa. You ain't thick! You're from the other side of the planet. How could you know? Besides, as I said, your comments were very much appreciated, as they backed up my own, current thoughts. Now I don't feel so....daft. See? I'm learnin' too....."Bungalow trash"....yes. Sounds classier than "trailer trash". I think I'll keep it. :)
And I wanna thank Andy too. I still believe that you may be on the right track as well here, at least to some degree. I plan to take the nut off of my input jack, and install a ring connector, connected to a 10 ga. wire, and run that to a grounding rod, driven directly into the ground. You can get them at Radio Shack, about 2.5 feet long, .5 inches thick, copper (maybe plated), with a wire connection on it. Even if my problem is an EMI/RFI problem, as I now suspect, a better ground may help to quiet it. Improvements in the grounding of my ....bungalow (hehehe), will be in the works as well. It's occured to me that I should make certain that the aluminum skin of my Large Holiday Home :) should be connected to ground too, as this may help to shunt off some EMI/RFI garbage.

So thanks to everybody who pitched in here with my tick...tick...tick...
and if anybody has any more thoughts on the subject, they will be equally appreciated.....Bad idea to ground a tube amp in the way I described above? Please let me know. I'll continue to watch this site as I stumble blindly into the next phase of this project. I should've signed up here a long time ago.

Now. As far as the goat is concerned, I tried to take her picture once, but as soon as I put my eye up to the viewfinder, she slammed her head into my crotch, so no, no pics. None the less, I love her dearly, and will hate to part with her, to whoever wins this contest. She's a good goat, and aside from the fact that you have to walk all the way around the front every time you want to kiss her, and the slamming into the crotch thing, she will be missed. But a deal is a deal, and the deal now stands at the goat, plus a garder belt or a bottle of A1 sauce, (nearly full), or, 5 rabbits. Watch this space to see who the lucky winner is! :)
 
Although it's possible it's EMI - my guess would be a ground loop............

I would avoid taking my amp directly to ground - - the problem with a gound loop is the fact that there are various sources to ground from the same power supply.

I am curious - what is your water supply - and how is it grounded? - if it plastic pipe out of the ground to the trailer - or copper (perhaps steel?).

Is it bonded to the building/panel ground?

verify that the trailer is bonded to that same ground rod.

If push comes to shove you can always get a faraday sheilded power supply to feed power just for your studio though - which will take care of anything except for EMF signals with your single coil pickups.

BTW - the thing that makes me doubt it's EMI is the fact that an airborne signal has to come from somewhere - it just doesn't exist at equal strength all around you - and thus slowly moving your pickups around in a complete circle should affect the strength of the signal.

Got an idea to either confirm whether it's EMI - turn off the power to the trailer - unplug the UPS from the system and play through your amp using only the clean source of the UPS - if it's EMI the problem will still exist - seeing are you won't be physically connected to the power source you should not pick up anything from as ground loop.

After you finish that test - if the problem doesn't exist - then check for trailer borne EMI source by putting power back on and running same test - if no problem then you are pretty much locked into the best possibility being a ground loop.

One other thing - your UPS is just that - a UPS - it is not a source of clean power - and is not designed to hep you if you have a problem like this even if the power/ground is the source. If you can't solve the problem any other way - one sure fired way you CAN would be to install an AC Isolation transformer for just the power being used in the studio.

This would create a power source for the studio with it's own ground - and they are designed for balanced load applications with extremely quiet operations in mind.

Hospital Grade iso transformers are some of the most quiet your can buy.

They are a wee bit pricey - probably run you around a grand to 1500 for your studio - but you would at least have peace and quiet.....

All of this depending on the problem not being airborne of course........

Rod
 
woooooooow....I'm aaaa DOPE!!! I can't believe I didn't even think of running on the battery! Thanks Rod ! Wayta freakin go. Well, the UPS is only a few weeks old. Just never thought of using it that way. Here's how it went.
Fired up the SCXD for a reference "tick". Unplugged the UPS. tick...tick...tick.
Threw the breaker for my studio room. tick...tick...tick
Cut the power to the whole trailer....BUNGalo. tick...tick...tick.
Hiked up to the power pole and cut the power to the well pump. You guessed it. tick...tick...tick. It was 1895 in here, except for the red light on my lil' Fender, and she's just tickin away. So. NOT a power problem. EMI or RFI....
( hey Rod, what's EMF?)......So, I stated turning around, and found something else that was interesting. When I did my 360 with the power up, there was no change in the tick. Powered down though was a different story.....ok. Think of a clock face. 12 o'clock and 6 o'clock, loud tick, but as I moved from those positions towards 3 o'clock and 9 o'clock, the tick got quite a bit quieter, with 3 and 9 being the quietest positions. So now that I'm finally concentrating on an airborne virus, I remember that there's a Doppler radar station a couple of miles away, hiding in the trees up there. Big freakin golf ball lookin' deal, with the Doppler thing rotating inside of it, so I wrote to the local weatherman and asked him how many revs his godam golfball is doin. If he writes back and tells me it's doing 55 rpm, we may have this solved, or at least maybe we'll know what's causing the #$%@# $%%$#@ $##$ %$#%#@$ TICKing. I can't imagine what else it would be....As I said, we're out in the sticks here. There ain't NOThin' out here but scattered houses and cattle ranches for 10 miles or so......I dunno. Whadda you guys think? Think it's the Doppler? If so, how am I gonna shield my gear from it?
Thanks a lot Rod. You just moved the process forward in a very big way.
Good thinkin' !!
 
woot !!!!!!!! well done on finding that,you related to columbo?

take a ride up to the "Doppler radar station" with a >cheap< radio, if its that, it should be very noticable/swamp it... if it is.. hunting acidents DO happen ;)

great post Rod Gervais you nearly got the kinky goat ...
 
Yeaaaaaa, I knew that if I just applied my massive brain to the problem I would eventually come to a satisfactory conclusion and I just remembered that you all can read Rod's post cuz it's right up...there.....:o
Then THAT happened.....:D Seriously though, Rod saved the freaking day there for me. I was about ready to bend over and run into a wall. I still haven't heard from the weatherman, but it still seems logical that the Doppler did it......A cheap radio....I don't have any of those anymore.....got some walkie-talkies though. THey pick up crap....I'll find somthin'....One thing that still doesn't fit. Remember the clock thing? Well, if I'm pointed at 12, where the strongest tick is heard, ( also at 6 ) the golf ball is at about 2 o'clock...Shouldn't it be at 12 or 6 o'clock, if that's my culprit? ...I'm gonna see what I can find out about radar on-line....Maybe...yea. I proly oughta do that before I plan a hunting accident....
Z
 
( hey Rod, what's EMF?)......

Typo...........

Think it's the Doppler? If so, how am I gonna shield my gear from it?

Let's see - it runs at 55 cycles per minute - and your problem is 55 cycles per minute....... hmmmmm,,,,,,,,, could it be? is it possible............ electrical power supplies here in the USA run 60 cycles per second.......... so yeah........ pretty good bet it's the doppler........

Solving the problem? Well that's a challenge - basically you have to create a huge Faraday Shield surrounding your whole room - and that is not going to be inexpensive. The best bet to stop the problem would be copper mesh - but that is a LOT of mesh........


Thanks a lot Rod. You just moved the process forward in a very big way.
Good thinkin' !!

Was my pleasure........ I've run into problems like this once or twice........

Good luck.........

Rod
 
aaaaaaa slight correction. I haven't yet established that the Doppler runs at
55 rpm. I'm still waiting to hear back from the local weatherman on that point. Still, I agree, it's almost got to be the Doppler. Nothin' else around here. I still don't get the directional thing though. Wouldn't my guitars generate the loudest tick when pointed directly at the Doppler? Also, I'm aware that we're on a 60Hz standard here.....are you saying that has some connection to how many revolutions a Doppler radar runs at?.......hmmmm. Guess I'm not getting what your thinking here. Thing is, I really need to be sure that I'm looking at the right problem before I start planning solutions. I looked into hospital grade isolation transformers .....6 years ago. Couldn't afford one then. Can't afford one now.
(the tax assessed value of my trailer is 2200 bucks) Some one told me that because the trailer has a metal skin, I should ground it, each panel, in order to shield my room. Anybody have any thoughts on that? And one more question for Rod. The copper mesh idea is a new one on me. Since we're pretty sure where my interference is coming from, would it be necessary to shield the whole room with copper mesh? Or, would meshing the offending wall provide fair to good results? Z
 
Ground the whole thing first and see what happens. Also have you looked into having your guitar's cavities shielded with copper or shielding paint? I've had it done to my 2 single coil jazz basses and it's made a huge difference in my basement studio. (annoying dimmers.)
 
And one more question for Rod. The copper mesh idea is a new one on me. Since we're pretty sure where my interference is coming from, would it be necessary to shield the whole room with copper mesh? Or, would meshing the offending wall provide fair to good results? Z

The fact that your strongest source is 12 and 6 - and not the direction of the radar itself means that the trailer itself is acting as an antenna - with the antenna "poles" running in the direction of the strongest waves.

Seeing as this signal is something that is in the air - it is all around your trailer - and doing one wall would proves pretty much useless - probably not making any difference - or at best only a very slight difference.

Copper shielding is used quite extensively on govt buildings requiring security measures - which stops the possibility of someone on the outside picking up the transmissions rom computer terminals, etc. The windows even have the mesh - although it's fine enough to see though.

Copper is the best sheilding because of it's tendency to stay in the form it's in.

Steel mesh has been used successfully - but it's tendency to rust makes it suspect for long term use.

You actually have to do all 6 sides of the room or structure in order to stop the problem with air borne transmissions of this nature. it could be done inside and left exposed - but is usually sandwiched inside of the wall frames.

The trailer body and frame should already be bonded to the building ground - and if it is not then doing that could possibly help you a little bit. It's the sort of thing you are going to have to experiment with.

Again,

good luck,

Rod
 
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