Yes adwaz, I agree with you and Rod, the guitar would be the logical place to add my first cap as a means of.....nipping the problem at it's source, but then I'd have one guitar that works, and 5 more to work on. ...Have you guys visited the guitar nuts website? Google guitarnuts.com if you haven't, it's worth a look, and I have pretty high hopes for the ideas you'll see there. (If you don't find it, lemme know, and I'll type in the url, cuz us old farts don't know from "pasting".....yet ) They explain how our guitars are horribly shielded when they come from the factory, even a 10 dollar component from RS has SOme kind of shielding in it, while expensive Gibson's and Fenders have none. Zip. Nada. They explain how to use adhesive foil to line the pick up cavities, and cover the backs of our pick-gaurds, totally enclosing our guitar's sensitive electronics, ( generally the most sensitive in the chain), and shunting RFI/EMI to ground. To NOt do this...well...to my mind, it's like heating a garage, with the garage door open. I've read reports from people who say that their guitars are "noticablly quieter ", and " nearly silent", after internal shielding. Also, "shoulda done this a long time ago..." is a common comment. There's pics there, at the site, and it looks like a major pain in the ass, but I'm handy, and I believe it was ....Andy (?).. who said that the "paint on" shielding works just as well, but costs a bit more. I'm gonna try both, and if the paint-on stuff works just as well for me, I'll spring for it. .....
I'm cheap, but I' also lazy...
So, here's my thinking at this point in time. I'm gonna get me some caps, toMORrow, and I'm gonna see if I can make up a cord that eliminates my freakin' tick. If so, then I should be able to instantly run all my guitars into my board. When time permits, I'm gonna start internally shielding my guitars, see if THAT will eliminate my %#$&^ tick. If it does, well...that would be the most.....elegant solution, ie to stop the interference from getting into my guitars electronics, one inch away from them. This would eliminate the need for the much larger scale projects of shielding all of my walls, ceiling, and floor, which really wouldn't be necessary where I live, if it wasn't for the damn tick in my guitar amps, and, the need to constantly monitor and possibly fix my neighbors 10 miles of e-fencing. As I said, I'm a moron when it comes to electronics, but I do know that our beloved electronics engineers spend a lot of time calculating voltages, when they design our gear. To start adding caps or resistors to that gear, while not causing changes that we can hear, and which may not hurt a thing, will still alter those carefully worked out voltages in what I would agree wound be a very minor way, but being a moron, who am I to say what exactly is "minor"? Could be, that if we reduce voltage at one point in the chain, another component may need to work harder, or less hard, causing another component to work harder.....I am a moron, yes, but I do understand that this stuff runs deep, a lot deeper than I'll ever care to comprehend.....Also, it's just less..elegant, than the body cavity shielding idea. So. I get my axes back in action with a cap. (IhopeIhopeIhope), and then start shielding guitars as time allows. If my first, newly shielded guitar causes no tick, with an off the shelf cord, then I'll have one that's ...right, and five to go. Could be that shielding won't stop the tick, while the cap does. if that's the case, I'll solder a cap into my body cavity, and hopefully have a generally much quieter, shielded guitar, with no tick, and five more to go.....and wouldn't that be just freakin excellent.....!!
INAworld where all guitars behave........
I'm still not quiting the e-fence project either. I'm gonna find or build some kind of gadget that'll tick like GregoryfreakinHines....(tapdancer), and I'm gonna cruise the hood, scanning anything and everything with a wire on it....
do underwire bras fit that criteria..?........why YES!! AAAIIIEE believe they DO!!....There's this babe down the road....wait'll I go down there with a shoe-box fulla wires and D-cells, and start "airport-scanning" her with a set of rabbit ears, single coils stuck on 'em with duct-tape....."...Lemme just get....under here......yea......right ....there.....better just do it one more time,..........just to be...safe...ok......and...one more time on the other side....I don't wanna miss any....free radicals..."
See? THAT'S the kinda shit this 'ol man lives for..............
Once again, I wanna thank everybody, even the guy who suggested that I should poke a hole in my speaker with a paper clip, (not here) , cuz any input is good input, helps us think about what to try, what not to. We're really getting down to it now, at least I think we are, and if nothing else, we've got some seriously reasonable things to try. I will indeed continue to post here, until I finally flick my tick, one damn way or the other. You guys are great. Shoulda come here a long time ago.
Zgrimes