Diagnosing Unwanted Buzzing

Gus Callaway · Post by **Gus Callaway** » 16 Nov 2018 5:37 pm

I've been getting this buzz coming out of my pedal steel:
https://soundcloud.com/gustebeast/guitar03/s-azHoT

When I plug in my bass, the buzz goes away, so I'm pretty sure it's coming from the instrument. My guess is that it is coming from either the pick up, or the wiring from the pick up to the jack (which looks pretty jank)
https://imgur.com/a/86P2bZp

Is one of these things more of a usual suspect or is it equally likely to be coming from both?

Gus Callaway · Post by **Gus Callaway** » 16 Nov 2018 6:56 pm

I'm also just generally confused about this wiring. There are two cables coming from the pickup, which split into 4 sub-cables. The red and black cables come out from the housing, only to be paired together, forming a loop. The white cables are soldered to metal paddles on both sides (one for each side). Then there is bare cabling that is fused from each cable and then soldered to one of the paddles. My guess is that the paddle with all the exposed wire soldered to it is ground, and the other carries the pick up signal, but I am just generally confused here. I was able to take a much clearer picture, so hopefully someone can shed some light on this.
https://imgur.com/a/6nf7RD3

mtulbert · Post by **mtulbert** » 17 Nov 2018 5:14 am

Gus,

The sound you are experiencing may be Electro Magnetic Interference. I have the same problem here and it took me a long time to find the culprit.

Many times it can be caused by the sun believe it or not, but not in my case. It would sometimes be present even in the evening.

One day I was practicing and all of a sudden it just stopped. Still daylight outside; so the sun wasn't the culprit. It turned out that the pump motor for the pool was the guilty party. We replaced the original with a variable speed pump and that was the cause.

Check and see if you have any pumps, or motors running around your property. Hopefully you can find the culprit. Could be the steel; do you hear it anytime you play your guitar?

Hope this helps

regards,

Gus Callaway · Post by **Gus Callaway** » 17 Nov 2018 11:46 am

I did a bit more debugging given your suggestion. My guitar is hooked up to a USB audio interface which connects to my computer. The computer is an obvious source of EMF, so this was my first suspect. Earlier I connected my bass to the same cable as my guitar and noticed no buzz, so I was already doubtful that it was the computer causing the problem, but to be sure I completely cut the power to all my electronics nearby and hooked the guitar up to an amp instead.

The amp has it's own hiss so it's a bit hard to discern, but I was able to notice a difference between the pedal steel and the bass with the amp. The bass just had a white noise like hiss, where the pedal steel had more of a buzz/hum, kind of like a very muted version of the sound you get when you touch your guitar cable to a piece of metal. When I turned back on the computer, the sound didn't change.

The sound is audible at all times, day or night, with very little variance.

mtulbert · Post by **mtulbert** » 17 Nov 2018 12:51 pm

Gus,

The EMF can be caused by something not in the sound setup. check and see what else is running in the house or nearby. It can be difficult to track down.

Years ago, I had a neighbor 4 blocks away with some kind of transmitter that he ran in the morning and made my tv unwatchable. The old days of analog antennas.

Fred Treece · Post by **Fred Treece** » 18 Nov 2018 10:41 am

That soldering job looks pretty ratty. Plus, it looks like telephone wire and not pro cabling.

The ground wires are connected to the same terminal as one of the signal carriers. Iâ€™m not an electricity tech, but that looks wrong and is probably the problem. If the hum goes away when you plug the bass into the the same power source, then the bass is providing the ground which is missing in the steel guitarâ€™s wiring scheme.

Nice job on that recording, btw. I didnâ€™t hear the buzzing, but my hearing is not reliable for things like that.

Gus Callaway · Post by **Gus Callaway** » 18 Nov 2018 4:24 pm

Fred, do you know what the red/black/white/expose metal cables would be? I agree that improper grounding would be a likely culprit.

mtulbert, I can't do too much about other EMFs unfortunately since I'm in an apartment. I did try and use some aluminum foil to make a rudimentary EMF shield, although I'm sure it didn't fully cover anything. I think I want to try fixing the cabling since it's ratty anyway, and then if that doesn't fix the problem I'll move on to further EMF testing.

Really now I just need to know what these wires are so I can route them appropriately.

Fred Treece · Post by **Fred Treece** » 18 Nov 2018 5:50 pm

Gus, the exposed wire is the ground. Generally speaking, black is hot, white neutral. Red is the oddball, but could be used when there is 3-way switching, or maybe for a coil tap on a humbucker. If there is no selector switch for a tap, then that wire has no apparent function. That is some weird looking wiring. That jack needs one more terminal to do a proper grounding, or the ground wire should be grounded somewhere else on the instrument.

Like I said, Iâ€™m no expert on wiring. Maybe someone else can give you a more definitive answer.

I have asked b0b to move your topic over to Electronics. Hope thatâ€™s okay with you. Maybe you will get some better advice there.

Tommy Mc · Post by **Tommy Mc** » 19 Nov 2018 5:56 am

Gus, I'm no expert, but the hiss doesn't sound like EMF to me. More like impedance mismatch or bad wiring. The solder job is abysmal. At a minimum, I'd clip and clean all those connections. I agree with Fred that there are more wires than I would normally expect from a single humbucker pickup. (We are looking at just one humbucker, right?) It might be helpful to see a photo of the pickup and how the cables split. Then we could get an idea of what each wire does. The bare (braided) wire is the ground. It's not uncommon to have a coupe of wires taped off together. They connect the two coils...and maybe a coil tap. I'm puzzled as to why one white wire is soldered to ground, and the other to hot. If we could see what's going on where the cables split, it might make more sense.

Michael Brebes · Post by **Michael Brebes** » 19 Nov 2018 7:09 am

Without knowing what brand of guitar, the pickup used, and the COMPLETE wiring, it is hard to tell what is going on. Yes, I find all those wires at the jack disturbing, but it begs a lot of other questions. Where are the multiple wires coming from? Are there any switches or pots involved in the circuit? More info is needed.

Jim Kennedy · Post by **Jim Kennedy** » 19 Nov 2018 10:50 am

You really need a wiring diagram for your guitar. Post make and model here. Without knowing what you have and how it should be wired, all you will get is opinions. If you cannot get the wiring diagram, a good guitar tech or instrument repairman should be able to help. Pickup wiring is not rocket science, but you need to know what you are looking for. In my experience faulty grounding is the number one culprit of buzzing, especially if you are getting a 60 cycle hum. If you have a single coil pickup in your guitar, electromagnetic noise will always be a problem, and poor grounding and faulty or incorrect wiring will only make it worse.

Gus Callaway · Post by **Gus Callaway** » 19 Nov 2018 6:56 pm

Sorry about the limited information folks, and thanks for all the informative responses nonetheless.

I wasn't able to find the exact model of the guitar. I inquired with the person I purchased it from so I'll hear back on that in a bit. Hopefully I can get the make/model of both the guitar and pickup which would help here a lot.
https://bb.steelguitarforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=331939 (the pickup in the photos is different from the one I have)

In the mean time, I do have a couple more images in case it helps. I'll include my photo from earlier just for completeness.
https://imgur.com/a/6nf7RD3
https://imgur.com/a/mXrNDaf
https://imgur.com/a/EkL47eV

When I do eventually redo the wiring, should I just attach the exposed ground wires to the metal body of the guitar, or should I do something more careful to avoid buzzing?

Fred Treece · Post by **Fred Treece** » 20 Nov 2018 12:48 am

This looks like an SD10 with the cabling from the pickup on the removed neck still connected to the jack. https://m.imgur.com/a/EkL47eV

Just FYI....The ground wire on mine is soldered to the jack along with the white wire, just like yours. I thought that seemed strange, but apparently it is common practice with humbuckers. Thatâ€™s the only thing that looks the same on mine though. I only have one cable with 5 wires. The black cable is soldered to the other terminal on the jack, and a green and a red are soldered and taped together. Color codes can mean different things with different makes of pickups.