I think it's going to be a long one, and I want company.
First, the back story: My rig for years has comprised a couple of Tele (one traditional and one with humbuckers) an pedalboard with 9 pedals powered by a Voodoo Labs PP2+, and a DIY clone of a Marshall 18 Watter. I mostly play at home, and have gigged at several different venues for occasional reunions with my old band.
Noise with this rig has never been a big problem. There might have been a little bit, but nothing I could hear when I was playing. I don't recall ever having to turn down the guitar to avoid embarrassing noise between songs.
Back in September, Mrs_S and I moved to a new, smaller house outside Buffalo. Due to the crazy 2021 real estate market, I didn't even see the place before move-in day. Mrs_S attended an open house, we offered substantially more than we wanted to, and our offer was accepted.
Upon settling in, I found the place was built in 1957. As an ex-electrician and now-electrical engineer, I got the feeling that much of the remodeling over the years was done my a professional tile-and-flooring guy, who also fancied himself an electrician. Not. Once I got my office/studio set up, I noticed a bad buzz in my guitar rig. Wiring in the room was late-'50s-vintage 2-conductor, with no ground despite previous owners installing 3-prong outlets. I ran a temporary, dedicated ground line from my rig outside to a ground rod, but it didn't fix the buzzing.
My noisy guitar rig wasn't the only problem, so we hired an electrician to upgrade us to a new 150-amp service. In the process, he found that the amateur job done by in the past was really bad, couldn't possibly have been inspected because it wouldn't have passed. Corroded, high-resistance connections outside had been causing voltage dips and dimming lights whenever motors started. and the new service solved all that. Overall the system was much better, but my amp was still buzzing. I decided that the old wiring in the studio/office needed to be replaced, and resigned myself to doing the difficult, time-consuming job as soon as I could get around to it. It will be months before that happens.
In the meantime, I figured that at least my noise problem wouldn't follow me elsewhere. A few weeks ago, I traveled back to my hometown near Philly to spend a day jamming with my old band mates, and damned if I didn't have the same noise problem at the drummer's house. WHAT THE... IS GOING ON!?!
Back home, I knew there was no way I could troubleshoot the problem with the crappy power wiring in my studio, so the first thing I did was install a new receptacle right at the new power panel in the basement, and moved the whole operation down there. The new receptacle is on its own breaker, and solidly grounded to the panel's bus. The buzzing persists.
Now, to start the troubleshooting...
First, the back story: My rig for years has comprised a couple of Tele (one traditional and one with humbuckers) an pedalboard with 9 pedals powered by a Voodoo Labs PP2+, and a DIY clone of a Marshall 18 Watter. I mostly play at home, and have gigged at several different venues for occasional reunions with my old band.
Noise with this rig has never been a big problem. There might have been a little bit, but nothing I could hear when I was playing. I don't recall ever having to turn down the guitar to avoid embarrassing noise between songs.
Back in September, Mrs_S and I moved to a new, smaller house outside Buffalo. Due to the crazy 2021 real estate market, I didn't even see the place before move-in day. Mrs_S attended an open house, we offered substantially more than we wanted to, and our offer was accepted.
Upon settling in, I found the place was built in 1957. As an ex-electrician and now-electrical engineer, I got the feeling that much of the remodeling over the years was done my a professional tile-and-flooring guy, who also fancied himself an electrician. Not. Once I got my office/studio set up, I noticed a bad buzz in my guitar rig. Wiring in the room was late-'50s-vintage 2-conductor, with no ground despite previous owners installing 3-prong outlets. I ran a temporary, dedicated ground line from my rig outside to a ground rod, but it didn't fix the buzzing.
My noisy guitar rig wasn't the only problem, so we hired an electrician to upgrade us to a new 150-amp service. In the process, he found that the amateur job done by in the past was really bad, couldn't possibly have been inspected because it wouldn't have passed. Corroded, high-resistance connections outside had been causing voltage dips and dimming lights whenever motors started. and the new service solved all that. Overall the system was much better, but my amp was still buzzing. I decided that the old wiring in the studio/office needed to be replaced, and resigned myself to doing the difficult, time-consuming job as soon as I could get around to it. It will be months before that happens.
In the meantime, I figured that at least my noise problem wouldn't follow me elsewhere. A few weeks ago, I traveled back to my hometown near Philly to spend a day jamming with my old band mates, and damned if I didn't have the same noise problem at the drummer's house. WHAT THE... IS GOING ON!?!
Back home, I knew there was no way I could troubleshoot the problem with the crappy power wiring in my studio, so the first thing I did was install a new receptacle right at the new power panel in the basement, and moved the whole operation down there. The new receptacle is on its own breaker, and solidly grounded to the panel's bus. The buzzing persists.
Now, to start the troubleshooting...
