Single Coil buzz or recording issue?

Lacuna-ZA

When I record on my simple home setup, the quality is ok'ish for such an amateur setup.

The only real problem for me is the unbelievable horrible buzzing noise in all my recordings. It is annoying as hell and can be faintly heard even when I'm playing.

Is this because I have single coils (Fender Jap Strat) or is there something wrong with my setup? I use a standard line-in on an entry sound card. I hear a solid buzz when I'm playing through my amp as well.. but it's not nearly as bad.

Heath

if you have a standard crt monitor and not a lcd , the hum is coming from the monitor , single coils pick them up

Neps

jip.. it's a case of the single-coil strikes again.. I have that problem with my LCD's, CRT's and everything in between.. All I do is move around the room, find a spot where it just goes away. I find if I turn my back to the monitors it also goes away.. There are ways to fix this, but I'm just too lazy.

Lacuna-ZA

Are you guys serious? The CRT causes the single coils to buzz more?

lol!

Will test out the theory soon enough. If the solution is moving around the "studio" I'll be a happy camper.

Neps

There's a number of reasons why the strat would buzz.. But it's most commonly a floating earth or interference from monitors. If you want to get rid of it, you can get some of that gold foil that you get at plant nurseries, and put that into your electronics cavity.

2 articles on this issue:

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/aug06/articles/guitartech_0806.htm (this article is AWESOME!)

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep04/articles/qa0904-8.htm

AlanRatcliffe

Yup. all my guitars are screened and are fitted with noiseless pickups. The CRTs are long gone, and even when they were here taking up space, I used to turn them off when doing guitar takes - just used keyboard commands for start & stop recording. Dirty power and earth loops can also cause problems, but much less so than single-coil hum.

andrewjbryson

I always turn off my monitor when doing guitar takes (even with Humbuckers)

Its 2nd nature, In fact when I eventually get myself a LCD monitor I will probably be reaching over to it
after hitting "Record"...

DonovanB

How much will a DI box remove?

Heath

di box will not remove coil hum from a monitor .

Neps

My LCD's also have a hum, but I've come to suspect my light dimmers for this particular problem.

Heath

LCD's will hum if there PSU's are built into the screen itself (if its your mac then there are 2 psu's builting the lcd , one for the lcd and one for the motherboard and such) , but lcd's with bricks don't usually hum .