Don't remember the name of the video, but this guy had a similar hum noise issue in his signal. He found out that a contractor box down his street was causing the issue. He used a battery powered amp with a guitar and used the pickups as an antenna to find where the hum was being generated. A quick call to the company solved everything. Edit: It was samuraiguitarist "Solving Another Mysterious House Noise" video
@@SpectreSoundStudios You are working with Steve? That guy had children's guitar videos in a PBS/Nickelodeon -style format, followed by commercials for Adam & Eve and other adult novelty vendors. PDF File from hell. Don't tarnish your name by including his.
@@ChrisTopherBunnellTy for mentioning this. Stevie sure needs to be asked who his channel is for… I sure you saw the KDH video as well but others need to.
And in many countries , if it doesnt kill you, very grumpy men from the govt will visit you in hospital with a "surprise bill" from the govt. Silly money fines (And if your american that "surprise bill" will be in the form of a hospital bill. I have no idea if its illegal to do home wiring in the US. Maybe both forms of surprise bill?)
@@shayneoneill1506 I don't believe it is illegal, however, if it results in a fire, good luck getting your insurance company to cover you for a fire resulting from faulty work done by a non-certified electrician.
To the guy asking about bodies/AC, etc. YES. The amount of people directly affects sound. That's why it's a good idea to have a buddy or sound guy monitoring it over the evening from the crowd. Even with no help, it's a good idea to go out front of the stage area when starting a new set if more people have come in. Noodle a bit...make sure everything is still clear and being heard. It usually only takes minor adjustments. Rock on.
I'm not an electrician but did spend years as a hospital equipment repairman. Anything with the green dot is considered "Hospital Grade." The red plugs, however, have that extra isolation because in hospitals (here in the US, at least) those are used to designate the outlets that are on the emergency backup power system. Which is also WHY they have that extra ground because they're essentially connected to two separate sets of power lines at the same time. Ground loops in hospitals play hell with the equipment and can even be fatal.
I’m lucky enough to live on a farm in Australia at the moment. I can turn it up as loud as I want and I have no neighbours 😁 it’s fucking awesome, it really test your technique, play loud and you will quickly find out what you’re doing wrong 🤘
If you have really dirty power you could always use something like a portable power station, the ones designed for RVs/Camping ? If you running a small studio with a laptop and 50w amp, a 2000w power station would likely give you around 15+ hours in a single charge.
Hi there Glen. I bought and installed really cheap quad rail/coil humbuckers in my "Stellarcaster" Strat build they have 4 each steel rails and bobbins wound individually and wired in pairs for the humbuckers with 3 very powerful ceramic magnets between the rails. with 5 wires output one braided ground then the reas like a Seymor Duncan wiring color code, . they have a deeper tone but when coil split sound very close to single coil tones. maybe because i wired them like a 50's Les Paul with coil splits using .047 orange drop tone caps retaining a Fender 5-way Blade switch. and using a P/P pot in the bridge tone to activate the bridge and neck Pick ups yogether regardless of other controls. all these 6 pots and 3 HB's are loaded into a hand made custom extended Brushed stainless steel pick guard. even the output jack is mounted in it bedind the bridge. that sports a brass full size trem block and roller saddles. the head stock is graced with a titanium nut roller string tree and locking tuners. the body and head stpck are painted in a space theme stars and planets done with spray cans and airbrushed details with lightly dusting of silver micro glitter, lightly over sprayed with the dark blue unsed in the base coat along with black all finished with 2X semi gloss acrylic clear coat. cool looing and way over board electronics for the ultimate Strat build that looks really cool and feels as good as it plays and sounds outof this world. beginning as a Starcaster-Strat electric guitar BY: Fender (said that on the head stock from factory) and ending as a nice guitar thqat I am proud to have made in my very first ever guitar building project. total investment including the guitar purchase and all the parts and materials and a few tools needed for the build as well less my labor, was just under $500 total. the resulting guitar if ordered from Fender "Custom Shop" might cost over 10 times what I have in my cool new toy. the first I built for my self built guitar collection. Wanna Play??? nets in line is a classic design and wired "Esquire" with a Dylan made Tele bridge Pick up he gave me in a random Give-away the pick up was part of an experiment with another pickup maker using the same parts but made by the 2 makers on the same equipment . to see the differences in sound if any.. there were subtle differences I got the one made by Dylan. cool huh.. wish me luck. oh Yeh Pine body as was the original "Esquire"
Hi Glenn ! Sound traveling in the air is affected by the temperature and moisture levels. Been a live sound engineer that done sound check in empty rooms, when the crowd show up, body heat the room, moisture goes up and… your show start and you loose all the higher frequencies at FOH. They just can’t travel as fast is all that moisture in the air. Think about how in the summer, in high heat temperatures, everything sound darker and how everything at really cold temperatures sound crisp and brighter. The higher frequencies travel faster and easier at lower temperatures. Put a cab in a freezer just for fun, you’ll notice it right away
5:44 I’ve seen this before. Sometimes, even if you have a modeling rig like a Quad Cortex or a Helix or something…you might still need an amp with it to act as a monitor.
I think Guitar Samurai had a video concerning that same electrical problem a while back. It was a ground issue elsewhere in his neighborhood. He literally had to take his guitar and a small amp outside and walk around the neighborhood to trace where the problem might've been. After a couple hours (I think it was) he found it and perhaps even saved someone's house from an electrical fire.
There’s a video going around of somebody who built an electric guitar with a shipping pallet. Like not even making it guitar shape. Sounds just like every other electric guitar. Tonewood debate over. Take that Paul Reed Smith
Re: Universal Audio -A portion of their plugin lineup is now available as native (no hardware DSP cards or interfaces required). Not all of their plugins, but some decently popular ones are now native. -Perpetual licenses for Native UA plugins can be purchased individually (or sometimes in little bundles as well). -They also offer a subscription thing to get all Native plugins on a monthly plan, but both options are available. Most of their perpetual licenses are rather expensive at their regular prices, but they also constantly offer deals (sort of like Waves does). I have a few of them, but all were purchased during Black Friday sales at or under maybe ~$50 each. Not nothing, but certainly cheaper than the insane full prices they advertise.
A couple things to add, a lot of times, depending on how you have things connected or hooked together can cause strange issues. One example I have personally is when I built my studio in my garage, the plug I had my main computer plugged into was rated for 20 AMPS, (I'm not sure how they do it in Canada or really anywhere else in the world for that matter), but in the states, you'll have your typical 3 prong outlet, but on the left vertical plug, there will be a little dash about halfway down. That signifies it's rated for 20 amps. There's all different types, anyway, I have an old style fuse box, with screw in fuses, not switches. The fuse that was providing power to my garage was a 10 AMP fuse. I'm not an electrician, but it was explained to me that even if you're not pulling 20 AMPS from that plug, if you don't have a 20 AMP fuse, it can do something strange to the power cycle, and it'll give you weird ground buzz or clicks and pops. After changing my fuse to a 20 AMP fuse... No more noise. (EDIT : Be aware though, if you do have fuses, and you are going to put in a fuse that can handle more power than what you have in there now... Make sure the WIRES you have are the correct gauge, and can handle more power going through them. The fuse is meant to stop more power draw than the wires can handle... If your wires can only handle a 15 AMP draw for instance, and you have a 20 AMP fuse in there... You run a super big risk of cooking those wires and starting a fire. So please be aware of that) Also, one other thing to think about is how you have things plugged in. If you have an interface plugged in via USB, and have a DI plugged into your interface, but also have a direct line from your amp plugged into the interface as well, that can do it... or if you have a ton of Y connectors, splitting the signal 1500 times... Things like that. Hope I could help. >M
13:46 yes, we have been noticing the difference between the soundcheck and the concert when the venue is full for decades. The pressence of many bodies filling the space is like stuffing the place with foam in wood structures, but it's flesh over bone. When the venue is full it all tends to sound a little (or a lot sometimes) less crispy and more muddy, that is the treble tend to appear muffled. Also a little difference in the volume in the furthest places from the stage comparing to the empty room. I have noticed this in large venues and in small bars. In this case specially if the amp cabs are directly in the ground not higher than the waist or chest of people. Air density and temperature changing the sound? I'm not sure to which degree but i would say equipment sensitive to temperature such as tubes, strings, wood and the human throat will be affected. Sometimes after an easy soundcheck the show feels like taming wild horses if it's too hot.
2:45 Since my band was only a 3 piece, I used to run ALL of the power through a "line conditioner" of some sort, a grey box that had 4 x 120outlets, every time we set up on stage. All it takes is one bad ground... your dad was right.
In building my home studio, I have been specifically seeking good sounding gear that is NOT what everyone has/uses or "industry standard". The surprise bonus is that now, among my friends, we have more choices of gear to share and use. Some of that gear is some of what you recommend in past videos. Lke a Drawmer compressor for drums. My DL441 was $600 used, and absolutely rocks! Thanks, dude.
2 things. 1. Noise in the studio. I had issues with noise in the signal chain in my little home studio. I currently live in a appartment that has been rebuilt to living quarters from previously being a small factory built in the 1950´s here in south Sweden. The wiring of that time was not on the same level as it would have been had the house been built during the 2000. What I have experienced is that a lot of gear is built with no ground shield. It is incased in plastic or other non conductive materials and that has caused a lot of problems for me over the years. Now adays I allways run a small cable, with an aligator clip in each end, from the ground prong from my wall outlet directly to some earth connection on my soundcard. This has solved A LOT of my noise issues during the last two years. 2. Chinese pickups. I bought 2 dual humbucker sets from Amazon and I will never do it again! The first set had a shorted Neck pickup. It sounded like a singlecoil. The other set had a missalinged hole for the pickup adjustment screw witch made it impossible to mount the pickup in the pickupframe. It was just far enough off so that it could not be redrilled to save the project. Soundwise, I could hear no differense from other brands that I have in my collection. But the overall build quality is sub zero, so don´t waste your money. Both sets ended up in the bin, where they belong.
To @that_jason_black s question. Yes the atmosphere with and without bodies present makes a big difference. In a live sound context as the room fills and heats up, the air density changes and humidity increases. Dave Rat has a great explanation how these changes just above the audience on the floor can create a boundary that reflects higher frequencies.
GLEEEEENN! My broke ass saved up for an ID14 mk2 and a Radial J48 a couple of years ago and I am very happy to report that these recommendations of yours were absolutely stellar!!! I'm recording and gigging with free Ignite Emissary, Kvassa/Kuassa Amps and the like, putting so many things I have learned from you about IRs and mixing to good use. My Band and my friends tell me my mixes (with SSD5, all channels individually processed as to imitate a real drumkit) sound spectacular even though I've spent like 350€ on recording gear. Just wanted to come in here and give a great big Thank You! Hope to catch a Monday Night Mix Review soon to see what you think
Hubble is a brand of industrial grade receptacles and plugs. In my opinion they are the most abuse tolerant AC Power connectors available and I would use a USED Hubble connector over a brand new connector of another brand. Ideally you use one insulated wire for hot, another insulated wire for neutral (120 VAC) a 3rd INSULATED wire for safety earth/ground, a receptacle that has the safety earth/ground isolated from the frame, and run the wire through steel conduit that is connected to earth/ground at the main circuit breaker panel. You also may need to drive conductive rods into the ground and electrically connect those rods to the Earth/Ground buss in the main circuit breaker panel. Also, the Hot, Neutral, and and Safety Ground/Earth wires should be gently twisted as that provides even more noise immunity. If you look inside any low impedance balanced microphone cable you will note that the two signal wires are twisted for improved noise rejection. Coaxial cable is crap for noise reduction.
I don't know how anyone can still deny what a huge difference the speaker makes in your tone. I have a 4x12 that I built for recording, with 4 different speakers in it. I wired it up in such a way that you can use any speaker by itself, or any combination of any of the 4 speakers in it. Since building that thing, it's been a piece of cake to get a guitar tone that sounds good and sits nicely in any mix I do. Being able to switch speakers on the fly really demonstrates the drastic change a speaker swap makes, as opposed to having a 30 minute break to swap out speakers, and forgetting what the original tone sounded like in the process of doing so.
D'Addario Tour-Grade Power Base 8 Outlet. $44. While I can’t guarantee anything, the demonstration I saw makes me think this’ll get rid of pretty much any electrical noise. My whole band plugs into these now.
Air density is definitely different with higher humidity and temperature, its also affecting the malleable texture of the speaker cone and the diaphragm of the mic. I have an environmental Science background and a guitarist of 35 years, a LOT happens to a speaker, mic, and other gear like drums with humidity and heat. COntraction and expansion would definitely change sound as well as liquids floating in between the sound source and mic or ear
I have a home electronics/computer lab and do amateur radio astronomy. On top of really well insulated and super grounded internal power, I've also build a 3 layer faraday cage into both the lab and my office. The outside world has become extremely electronically noisy and being able to insulate your equipment from the basic outside electronic noise that's in the very air, is something more studios should look into. Remember, the way the microwave background radiation was discovered, was because some scientists were testing radio receivers and kept receiving this massive noise on them. A lot of equipment, especially audio equipment, is relatively well insulated against this, but people forget they also have connectors and cables running all over the place. And in case of guitars, you literally have big open copper coils on them to pick up and generate signals from strings vibrating in the air a distance removed from them. Other than a full faraday cage, no level of electronic insulation can protect you against open antennas like that being a core part of making your music.
Hey Glenn, Katana gigger here. I run 3 50watt mk-2 in a wet dry wet setup. (Cover rock band) but it does the metal just fine when time and pitch effects are off. Plain and simple, katana power amps work phenomenally for modelers, and instead of forking over $$$ for an orange pedal baby, or powerstage, just buy a 200$ katana. The 100 watt models can be used with a floor switcher to switch between presets, but the 50 watt models do not have that option. The interface on the quad cortex is much easier to use for us guitar brained people, compared to the katana tone studio which if you need to adjust global eq settings at a harsh venue, you are screwed with a katana. The other guitar player in my band uses a quad cortex and a katana for his poweramp, and he switched to the katana after having a headrush frfr and line6 power cab.
Going to Priest on Oct 18! You're right the main difference between "cheap chinese" and brand-name pickups are if the cheap chinese are not waxed, they're feedback machines, which can be an asset or a liability, if you're struggling with a bunch of Zakk Wylde harmonics, try an unwaxed pickup, they're great for pinch harmonics.
4:06 Hubble is a name brand. The magic phrase is "isolated ground". The ground wire isn't connected to the frame. In many commercial buildings and high-rises, the receptacle frame is connected to the conduit which is connected to the metal parts of the building. That's what you're avoiding with the isolated ground receptacle. I believe the IG receptacle is usually orange, but I'm not sure if it's an absolute "always". If the building is wood frame wired with Romex or you have plastic electrical boxes, then I don't know as a isolated ground will do anything for you. It's already isolated from everything else.
Sound does propagate differently at different temperatures! But... On a studio scale it's probably not audible. It's definitely applicable in live sound situations, particularly very large outdoor stages. L'Acoustics and D&B Audiotechnik, two speaker manufacturer whose speakers are on major artists' tours (Foo Fighters and Taylor Swift, for example), take temperature and humidity into account in their prediction software to indicate how the sound will propagate -- both to the audience, and to the surrounding area. L'Acoustics' P1 processor also takes weather into account and compensates speaker EQ accordingly. I deployed a sound system on a 100-year-old sailing schooner for an audience on the water (a unique concert for paddle-boarders and kayakers). Just a pair of EVs flown from the ship's rigging carried far more distance than I expected, because sound carries over water! The cold water cools the air just above it, so sound gets ducted between the water and the warmer air above (a temperature inversion). But all this has to do with long distances, and mostly for noise mitigation. A microphone inches from a guitar speaker? A sound difference might be measurable, but almost certainly not audible. I'm looking forward to seeing and hearing the test results!
Again with the pickups!!! Glenn, there is now a Harley Benton DC Custom-II very similar to your blue one, I bought red one for shits and giggles, it comes with Grover tuners (which I swapped with Gotoh locking that I had extra in my box of magic parts) and it also has SS frets and new Tesla Nitro humbuggies. I don't play metal, I play classic rock sound lower overdrives, and I swapped the bridge pickup for DiMarzio DP103, and it sounds much better, but the stock neck pickup is perfect. But when I engage MXR Fullbore Metal pedal, you can't even tell the difference between humbuggies and singlecoils, so EF YOU metalheads with swapping the pickups from this to that, we don't live in the early 80's anymore where you needed to push your JCM800's to have any gain! For clean and low overdrive guys, there is a small difference between Harley Benton Tesla Nitro pickups and DiMarzio PAF style ones, but they both rock as hard as my Fluence Modern ESP E-II Viper on heavy gain!!!
I have watched this channel for a while now and I notice a lot of comments about what musicians can't hear or truly don't know or understand especially when it comes to pick-ups.. Personally I hate active pick-ups but when I hear people bashing no one knows the difference between cheap and DiMarzio it is sad, I have used DiMarzio for 30+ years And it is because the old days when I started using them there were a lot of noises different wiring, wiring didn't last and they squeeled and made bad noises since then many people got to look at what DiMarzio and other companies did different like for example why the P90 was a Gibson only product and no one could make as great but since DiMarzio has done great , Dylan's Pickups have become a great one and one of his specialty pickups.. I am sure since other companies have opened them and run tests.. Nothing is out of reach these days with many things but when I started my heroes played them so I did but since I have seen more people try to bring the same product for less ... I have been playing since I was 7 and I used to love the pickups that came in my Ibanez guitars but between amps being sensitive or places you play having electric issues I just felt confident having MY guitars all the same so I could do the best each time and it made my playing more confident and that's what was important.. I tried many pickups and I stuck with DiMarzio because I got a great product every time .. I think that is more the reason for the other pickups than just not knowing or understanding why many players pay a extra to upgrade even tho others say they don't have to ...
Universal Audio offers both monthly payments and own it forever. They have made most (if not all) plugins available as VST, not requiring their hardware. I've got their hardware, and had an issue years after warranty expired and had to have them repair it...called their tech support, got an RMA and had it back in about 3 days and cost less than $300 with shipping. Their hardware is expensive, but is very flexible and sounds great. Also, I keep all of my gear behind a voltage regulator, surge protector, and Furman filters.
I had a fuckton of noise, then my house burnt down. That got the most of the loud noise off, a new electrical box is what sorter most of it, and also 0 solid state amplification on the side valve amps go. I mean no solid state amps.. Then i have bass strings going to radiators, so i got loads of metal connected
And the Boss katana is a jazz chorus, and atleast all boss gt models have a predesigned option for output that is the powerstage of the katana, which is again jazz chorus magic.
Piggybacking off of the noisy power question, I have a possibly related issue where if I use even the slightest amount of gain then my amps start picking up radio stations. This goes for all of my amps (Fender Deluxe, Bassman, Ampeg SVT4, Marshall JCM800, Roland JC120) and has happened in the two different houses I've lived in in this area. I've tried various grounding solutions from the Humno to adding an extra ground wire that connects my surge protectors to the plumbing with no effect whatsoever. The only thing that has been a halfway decent work around is replacing the amp's input cable (which seems to double as a radio antenna) with a battery powered wireless kit. This drastically cuts the volume of the radio station such that the speaker mics don't really pick it up, but only works for as long as the charge on the wireless pack lasts (2-3 hours max). If I connect the power charge cable to wireless units while using them, then the radio stations play back at high volume. Worst of all it's usually Taylor Swift or some shit. Ever encounter this problem and if so, what was the solution? ...hopefully not to move to another city.
Humidity can really change the sound. If it's noticeable in a studio would be interesting to test though. But if you want proof, just compare how things sound outside on a clear, dry day compared to a very foggy day. Yes, there's more to it than 'just' the humidity (eg. fog...) but it's a fairly simple way to hear that it does make a change. Again, I don't know how much the relatively small humidity changes in a confined space like a studio change the sound. Thinking as an engineer I can even see humidity affect the speakers and microphones. Speaker cones are mostly made from paper or cloth, so they do absorb moisture, which changes the characteristics of the materials. Would LOVE to see a comparison on that ;) "wet" vs "dry" speaker cones ;)
I use a combination of a Hum-X that I plug into the wall and a power bar into the Hum-X. I also added an Electro Harmonix Hum-Debugger to the front of my pedal chain to get rid of the florescent light hum that I was getting on my single coils (my Rick 4003 was especially bad - Yes, I'm a bass player). This combination seems to work for me.
If noise changes based on the orientation of your guitar, it's an appliance (fluorescent lights? Computer monitor?) interacting with your guitar. This is a common problem with single coil pickups, but less so with humbuckers (noise is the reason humbuckers were invented). A dummy coil could help if you're using single coils, but I don't know of any metal guys using single coils.😄 Also, we had a dimmer switch on our studio lights that was causing a ton of noise.
Hi Glenn, cool thing is since you are a metal shop I can agree with you about pickups not making a difference. When I engage my Boss Metal Zone through my 100 watt Marshall 2555 into a 4 X 12 cab with green backs cranked to jet engine at afterburner I can’t tell pickup differences. (Just kidding about the volume). I agree speakers and cabinet build are key to a great metal sound. A little compression helps. I perform Blues and Pop Rock so pickups matter in these circumstances. Additionally I’m a Helix/Tonex and Katana user so with my style pickups matter. I enjoy learning from you and all you advice is sound. Keep teaching up and thanks a bunch.
Unplugging everything first is definitely a good idea - I had to do that in a previous apartment to find a wicked hum, and it turned out to be my then-10yo HP printer. Unplugging the printer solved the problem, and a new Canon replaced the HP soon after. Current policy: no printers in the studio.😎
I had a noise problem that I chased around for a couple weeks. It was really frustrating.. I bought several of the gadgets including a giant power conditioning box. It's a really big, and heavy, power strip thing that was supposed to isolate and condition the power. It didn't work. I also borrowed a humno from a friend which also didn't work. Finally, I tried a noise pedal which ended up working great, and I didn't have to turn it up that high at all so it didn't choke out the guitar sound. We guessed that it was some type of interference that messes up the sound after all the gadgets. I could try to chase it down, but the pedal works amazingly well so I didn't bother.
I have an old poster on my wall that says: "I'm only responsible for what I say. Not for what You understand!" That could and should be a disclaimer on Glenn's videos. And perhaps a t-shirt :) Great work by the way!
re: dirty DI -- If all else has been addressed (instrument shielding, cable, RF interference), you might try plugging the bare minimum of gear needed to record a DI (computer, interface, monitor?) into a UPS with a decent battery backup time and disconnect it from the house AC before hitting record.
13:38 Yes! The presence of the audience does make a difference. Check out David Rat's video "Audience Heat Messes With Concert Sound" where he shows that with a scale model experiment. I don't know as that would make a difference in a recording studio, but I could see it making a difference with paper cone speakers as it could change the dynamics of the speaker.
I have crappy electrical in my practice room and have this dirty power problem. Even humbucking pickups buzz slightly. Morley Humno didn't help. What did help was running an extension cord to the bathroom which has a GFCI outlet. Might help short of having to do major rewiring.
Grounding issues, dirty power, could also be EMI creeping in. Fortunately you can buy EMI detectors, fairly cheap, at most hardware stores...at least the big box stores. Super easy to use. And if that doesn't work, then you still have an EMI detector to keep you safe when you're messing around with wires.
6:35 I changed out the pickups in my Michael Kelly from the Rosewill pickups to Gibson 70’s tributes. The Gibson pickups were higher output and less noisy but they only sounded marginally clearer over the Rosewill pickups. So it’s down to preference for the SLIGHT differences in sounds. I ran them through an MT-15 with an Eminence DV-77. They really don’t sound much different. I’m glad I listened to you and bought the pickups for $240 instead of wasting thousands on a Gibson just to get slightly quieter pickups.
This is why I built my studio at 6000’. The air is better for most types of music. Also, if you will recall, this had something to do with why Dethklok recorded their album in a submarine.
A GFCI outlet helped me with that noise problem. If circuit is poorly grounded, you won't get rid of it, this is usually the case with an old house/wiring.
we can confirm that temperature can somewhat change the overall sound in the practice room.. we used to play in a garage and in winter it was quite cold at the beginning of the rehearsal but as the temperature changed the longer the gas heater was on.. the overall sound in the room changed somewhat too.
When you have hum, you need to make sure the electric installation has a grounding system implemented, we here call it javelin. I had that issue in my parents house, we couldn't install a javelin, so I ordered a EB Tech Hum Eliminator from Amazon in 2012 and it helped a lot, also changing my tubes from the stock chinese Peavey Red tubes to Sovteks helped. Hum is so annoying...
Glenn you recommending the ToneX was a cure for my GAS. I was able to use the captures and not dealing with the space and clutter and also get use out of my rigs (Joyo Meteor, H&K Tonemeister 39, Traynor Reverb Mate 40) without putting hours on some of the tube amps and older hardware. Really makes my life easier to preserve equipment in a time where tubes are becoming more expensive and scarce. The eco system is great and enjoy your channel and no bullshit advice. I don't get how people can be such idiots and understand the value of being able to preserve your amp sounds and using this with existing effects. Anyway thanks man and rock on!
All the due needs is a power conditioner - or even less expensive line USP. Battery voltage is always going to give a clean pure sine wave. This is basically a must-have for serious reproduction equipment - and if there's a turntable i place - there's no way around no matter where you live. Shared electricity is always going to be "dirty". So start with battery and dc to ac converter - see if that helps. if not - problem is with amp.
There was one You tube video I say where a guy had hum issues , he isolated just his amp and guitar and still had the hum , he actually went to his neighbors and plug in , same hum , come to find out after a long time of messing with it , it was a ground loop at the central node the entire neighborhood connected too and the only way to get it fixed was from the power company and he had called them several times but they said it was not a issue , until one guy decided to test away from the house , he found it.
I had an electrical noise in my upstairs of house, tried the best gold plated 100$ cables. Power conditioner everything, made a slight difference. But after i built my soundroom in the basement. All new electrics, panel, etc. Noise was gone.
Hey Glenn. A few years ago I changed the pickups in my Chinese Telecaster to Seymour Duncans. I forgot what date I did it and just listened to those old recordings. Low and behold I can't pinpoint the date without looking it up. I'm shocked I tell you... shocked! Keep up the great content
Glen, there’s nothing wrong with splurging on an expensive piece of gear if you can afford it. I wouldn’t recommend buying something expensive just for the name or peer pressure, especially if you don’t have the money. But I love how you share alternatives for those who cannot or do not want to spend it. Keep it up, love the show!
One of the comments reminded me of a quick story: 2nd guitarist in the band I was in about 8 to 9 years ago talking about how if his guitar was alder like Alexi's he would sound much better. I countered with "yeah, reminds me of my lamp. If it were wood instead of ceramic i'd be able to see better at night." He said that doesn't make sense and I said to explain it to me in a way that it does. He took about 30 seconds to think, realized what I was getting at and kept his mouth shut. Kept that same guitar to this day, actually. Funny how thinking for a little bit works, doesn't it? Lol
As someone whose first guitar had cheap Chinese pickups, here's my personal experience: it probably depends on the company. Had two guitars made by the same company (S101), and while they were fine at bedroom levels, no noise gate on earth could silence the ungodly squealing in a full band situation. Switched pickups out, and while the squealing was gone, I really never noticed a difference in base tone.
My favorite cheap bass in my Rogue LX 205 Series 3. It’s nothing fancy or flashy, but plays well. I hate fat necks on guitars, but that one plays well and I barely notice it. I think I got it on sale for like 80 bucks on Amazon during a holiday sale a few years back. The finish comes off really easily, but it’s a good low budget bass for when I travel and dont want my higher end instruments getting messed up or stolen. Again, it’s nothing crazy, but for the price I got it at and what I use it for, it was basically a steal.
Was hoping you could dispel/confirm something for me. "Fender amps can't do metal" I have a Hot Rod DeVille and every time I tell people that, it's instantly you can't use that for metal. With a decent distortion pedal I can get absolutely ripping tone, but nobody will even give me a chance. Could you maybe rent a Hot Rod Deluxe/DeVille and see what you can get out of it? They're not crazy expensive and might be a good tube amp option for some folks who can find a good deal on one used. Fuck you very much Glenn!!
Those people don’t know shit. You absolutely can, the right pedal tightens those up just peachy. The amp itself might be difficult to do metal alone, but a pedal will easily push that one into the zone.
I recommend you two watch Jim Lill's video about amp tone (and all his other videos, to be fair). The main takeaway is that there's no secret sauce to amps, and it's possible to make very different amps produce the exact same sound if you know how to control the variables like frequency response from different EQ circuits.
Noise: Turn off any lights that have a dimmer switch, move any wifi modems out of the room, keep guitars away from computers, turn off anything with a fan. Last, a power isolation transformer might work by eliminating ground loops.
For the guy with the electricy and noise problem.. another option is to buy a large LFP powerpack like an Ecoflow or Bluetti and run the amp/modeller/computer etc in isolation from one of those. Also turn off all fluorescent lights, take LED lights off the mains, move them FAR away from any amplification/drive pedals etc.
I don't know about the density of the air in a hall, but the presence of lots of people makes a HUGE difference in the sound even in an acoustically treated theatre.
As for the Air comment, Ill say it, in venues when room filling up and it gets warmer . It happened to me or even other engineer we get little feedback around 6k-8khz. Even after a spotless soundcheck... Of course people absorb sound which is why you should always check your max headroom in a soundcheck especially your low end. Often subs are positionned at ground level so bodies will absorb it. Remember a live mix has to push through your body and not slaughtering your ears. I come across way too many engineers mostly mixing in the high end spectrum.
For Mark's issue @2:12 Glenn's idea may very well work. However if not, I'd also suggest getting a sinewave UPS to run your computer and gear from. Like a Cyber Power PFC Sinewave for example. That would for sure provide a clean electrical signal. It will cost much more than Glenn's idea, but may cost less than moving. Best of luck!
It's not recommended to run like it indefinitely, but if just for a recording session or gig putting a non-grounded power extension in between usually takes any ground related noise away. Sometimes grounding can also cause high pitched sounds, pops and noise running a laptop with a grounded plug. Not saying it's a fix, but a non-grounded power extension is something I always carry in my gearbag for obvious reasons. I have tried ferrite beads but haven't had success eliminating ground related noise where present.
GLLLLLLLLLLLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEENNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! About that Quad Cortex and Boss Katana as a power amo guy. Well, I own a Boss Katana Mk II myself and on one side I love it and on one side I just hate it. First of all you've got all of these nice effects. But some of these sound like 💩. If you're trying to get a nice Metal tone, the Boss katana is great for you but it still has two little details I don't like about it: You just have three IRs (Sound is in the speaker, so why no option to load in multiple IRs yourself?) and i order to have a footswitch, you need to buy one seperatly, while the Quad Cortex has none of those problems. The only annoying thing about the QC is the little sound-gap you get between switching presets, which the Boss Katana doesn't have. Anyways thanks for the effort you put into your videos! Greetings from Germany
I had a similar noise problem with my monitors. I tried them in my neighbour's house next door and they were silent. I then moved them back to the studio and then ran a long power supply cable in through the window from my neighbour's just to trouble shoot, and the fizz came back. It turns out my studio had a direct line of sight to a cluster of mobile phone antennas on a nearby block. I moved the studio to another room, problem solved...
Every body in a concert hall acts like a Big bag of water, absorbing and diffusing parts of the sound, Mostly dampen LF As the crowd increases in size and density there is an 'upcurrent' caused by the combined body heat, which can have an effect on the HF throw (that is, how far the High frequencies will travel), basically causing a diversion towards the sky/ceiling. There are AES (Audio Engineers Society) papers regarding each of these factors. There are also mentions of these effects in 3 chapters of the Don Davis Bible for live sound "Sound System Engineering".
Pickups - For the past few years I’ve been trying to find good, cheap gear. I ended up with Fleur pickups. They’re great, cheap, but with adjustable pole pieces, wax potted and great customer service. For the bridge, I ordered an alnico 5 in 8k and 15k ohm and a ceramic 15k ohm. Yes they were all very slightly different in tone. The odd part seemed to be that the 8k had no balls at all, may have been faulty. My 2 cents. Keep up the great work.
I feel like if different temperatures and humidity do make a detectible sound difference it may not necessarily be because the air is different but also because it affects the equipment slightly.
2:11 I have the same problem with my Rode M5 small diaphragm condenser pair. I tried to record my acoustic guitar but some digital noise, which sounds like bitcrushing in irregular intervalls is present and is recorded as well. First I thought the mics were broken, but I got them examined in my local music store. They didn't have any issues of that kind. The curious thing is, that one of them doesn't have this problem while the other one has. I switched channels and cables then. The cable change did somehting, but at the next time it was gone. The same thing happens when I hook my Roland synth via MIDI in my Behringer U-Phoria 404. I read something about magnetic resonance by the HDD, but it only affects one of them and the synth. My guitars and bass guitars have no issues at all. Do you something Glenn?
Glenn did a show a few years ago where he got rid of all his voice track background noise using izotope rx. I've been using that to eliminate all noise from whatever the source. Just record a few seconds of only the noise on the armed track.
#1 might be having a noise issue with the power co.'s overhead lines. Where I live there is a mile plus long distributed 120/240V line fed with multiple (yet all overloaded) transformers. 8AM to 8PM the noise drowns out any pickup signal and after 8PM you only have to be 200 feet from the road to have a chance. And stand 90 degrees to the power lines.
about the vintage tubes test you are planning to make, I would suggest cranking them up to 100%, they're supposed to add harmonic distortion when they go beyond a certain point where they're no longer responding linearly (I think)
Don't remember the name of the video, but this guy had a similar hum noise issue in his signal. He found out that a contractor box down his street was causing the issue. He used a battery powered amp with a guitar and used the pickups as an antenna to find where the hum was being generated. A quick call to the company solved everything.
Edit: It was samuraiguitarist "Solving Another Mysterious House Noise" video
Thanks for sharing! That’s a FANTASTIC idea!
Old cassette deck head wired to radio shack battery amp makes a good EMF detector.
Or a portable AM radio
@@SpectreSoundStudios You are working with Steve? That guy had children's guitar videos in a PBS/Nickelodeon -style format, followed by commercials for Adam & Eve and other adult novelty vendors. PDF File from hell. Don't tarnish your name by including his.
@@ChrisTopherBunnellTy for mentioning this. Stevie sure needs to be asked who his channel is for…
I sure you saw the KDH video as well but others need to.
I was going to reply this too. It's a great vide, it was a Transformer.
Indeed, need pro electrician. Will add: DON'T fuck around with mains wiring unless you are certified - it may well kill you.
Ahh the fires of “ well in a car black wires are ground why does this keep shocking me?”
Bass players need to know this!
And in many countries , if it doesnt kill you, very grumpy men from the govt will visit you in hospital with a "surprise bill" from the govt. Silly money fines (And if your american that "surprise bill" will be in the form of a hospital bill. I have no idea if its illegal to do home wiring in the US. Maybe both forms of surprise bill?)
I've placed in some places with scary electric wiring too. Bar owners, so trustworthy.
@@shayneoneill1506 I don't believe it is illegal, however, if it results in a fire, good luck getting your insurance company to cover you for a fire resulting from faulty work done by a non-certified electrician.
I ship my tone air in from Greenland.
Do you keep it refrigerated during shipping? I heard that makes the most difference. Totally worth it.
@emartinezr Refrigeration is a must. It's best if it's between 33 - 35% humidity, and you have to test it for dubstep before you take delivery of it.
so its you pushing the price on Greenland Tone air up!
Then you'll sell it twice the price on Reverb?
See...
There're your problem.
I get my tone air from a Nigerian prince
To the guy asking about bodies/AC, etc. YES. The amount of people directly affects sound. That's why it's a good idea to have a buddy or sound guy monitoring it over the evening from the crowd. Even with no help, it's a good idea to go out front of the stage area when starting a new set if more people have come in. Noodle a bit...make sure everything is still clear and being heard. It usually only takes minor adjustments. Rock on.
I'm not an electrician but did spend years as a hospital equipment repairman. Anything with the green dot is considered "Hospital Grade." The red plugs, however, have that extra isolation because in hospitals (here in the US, at least) those are used to designate the outlets that are on the emergency backup power system. Which is also WHY they have that extra ground because they're essentially connected to two separate sets of power lines at the same time. Ground loops in hospitals play hell with the equipment and can even be fatal.
You've Forced me to Try Harder at mixing my boring (But still human) music!
same for me 😎🤘
I’m lucky enough to live on a farm in Australia at the moment. I can turn it up as loud as I want and I have no neighbours 😁 it’s fucking awesome, it really test your technique, play loud and you will quickly find out what you’re doing wrong 🤘
If the Kookaburras start up then you know you need to practice more...
@@ffsireallydontcare yes they laugh at you 😂
Record yourself. That let's you know.
@@gilbertspader7974 definitely, recording hides nothing 😁
Does your DI box matter? - Have you ever explored different DI boxes? - I found out they make a noticeable difference - might be a good video
And now I see you did one 5 years ago!
If you have really dirty power you could always use something like a portable power station, the ones designed for RVs/Camping ? If you running a small studio with a laptop and 50w amp, a 2000w power station would likely give you around 15+ hours in a single charge.
Hi there Glen. I bought and installed really cheap quad rail/coil humbuckers in my "Stellarcaster" Strat build they have 4 each steel rails and bobbins wound individually and wired in pairs for the humbuckers with 3 very powerful ceramic magnets between the rails. with 5 wires output one braided ground then the reas like a Seymor Duncan wiring color code, . they have a deeper tone but when coil split sound very close to single coil tones. maybe because i wired them like a 50's Les Paul with coil splits using .047 orange drop tone caps retaining a Fender 5-way Blade switch. and using a P/P pot in the bridge tone to activate the bridge and neck Pick ups yogether regardless of other controls. all these 6 pots and 3 HB's are loaded into a hand made custom extended Brushed stainless steel pick guard. even the output jack is mounted in it bedind the bridge. that sports a brass full size trem block and roller saddles. the head stock is graced with a titanium nut roller string tree and locking tuners. the body and head stpck are painted in a space theme stars and planets done with spray cans and airbrushed details with lightly dusting of silver micro glitter, lightly over sprayed with the dark blue unsed in the base coat along with black all finished with 2X semi gloss acrylic clear coat. cool looing and way over board electronics for the ultimate Strat build that looks really cool and feels as good as it plays and sounds outof this world. beginning as a Starcaster-Strat electric guitar BY: Fender (said that on the head stock from factory) and ending as a nice guitar thqat I am proud to have made in my very first ever guitar building project. total investment including the guitar purchase and all the parts and materials and a few tools needed for the build as well less my labor, was just under $500 total. the resulting guitar if ordered from Fender "Custom Shop" might cost over 10 times what I have in my cool new toy. the first I built for my self built guitar collection. Wanna Play??? nets in line is a classic design and wired "Esquire" with a Dylan made Tele bridge Pick up he gave me in a random Give-away the pick up was part of an experiment with another pickup maker using the same parts but made by the 2 makers on the same equipment . to see the differences in sound if any.. there were subtle differences I got the one made by Dylan. cool huh.. wish me luck. oh Yeh Pine body as was the original "Esquire"
I can already hear the Soft overtones and Piano lows from the tubes …. Hahahaha
What about the haunting mids!
@@jdkimple can’t forget those
no, it's "punchy yet warm" lows "sparkling" highs and "rich complex harmonics" distortion get your sales jargon right.
Hi Glenn !
Sound traveling in the air is affected by the temperature and moisture levels.
Been a live sound engineer that done sound check in empty rooms, when the crowd show up, body heat the room, moisture goes up and… your show start and you loose all the higher frequencies at FOH.
They just can’t travel as fast is all that moisture in the air.
Think about how in the summer, in high heat temperatures, everything sound darker and how everything at really cold temperatures sound crisp and brighter. The higher frequencies travel faster and easier at lower temperatures.
Put a cab in a freezer just for fun, you’ll notice it right away
"How do you say delete that" is the motto right now in the studio, that movie is awesome!
5:44 I’ve seen this before. Sometimes, even if you have a modeling rig like a Quad Cortex or a Helix or something…you might still need an amp with it to act as a monitor.
I think Guitar Samurai had a video concerning that same electrical problem a while back. It was a ground issue elsewhere in his neighborhood. He literally had to take his guitar and a small amp outside and walk around the neighborhood to trace where the problem might've been. After a couple hours (I think it was) he found it and perhaps even saved someone's house from an electrical fire.
Humming and clicking reminded me of Samuraiguitarist's video about a broken distribution transformer. ruclips.net/video/t6E0O8UtObU/видео.html
There’s a video going around of somebody who built an electric guitar with a shipping pallet. Like not even making it guitar shape. Sounds just like every other electric guitar. Tonewood debate over. Take that Paul Reed Smith
I saw that! lol. It sounded just like any other electric.
Re: Universal Audio
-A portion of their plugin lineup is now available as native (no hardware DSP cards or interfaces required). Not all of their plugins, but some decently popular ones are now native.
-Perpetual licenses for Native UA plugins can be purchased individually (or sometimes in little bundles as well).
-They also offer a subscription thing to get all Native plugins on a monthly plan, but both options are available.
Most of their perpetual licenses are rather expensive at their regular prices, but they also constantly offer deals (sort of like Waves does).
I have a few of them, but all were purchased during Black Friday sales at or under maybe ~$50 each. Not nothing, but certainly cheaper than the insane full prices they advertise.
A couple things to add, a lot of times, depending on how you have things connected or hooked together can cause strange issues. One example I have personally is when I built my studio in my garage, the plug I had my main computer plugged into was rated for 20 AMPS, (I'm not sure how they do it in Canada or really anywhere else in the world for that matter), but in the states, you'll have your typical 3 prong outlet, but on the left vertical plug, there will be a little dash about halfway down. That signifies it's rated for 20 amps. There's all different types, anyway, I have an old style fuse box, with screw in fuses, not switches. The fuse that was providing power to my garage was a 10 AMP fuse. I'm not an electrician, but it was explained to me that even if you're not pulling 20 AMPS from that plug, if you don't have a 20 AMP fuse, it can do something strange to the power cycle, and it'll give you weird ground buzz or clicks and pops. After changing my fuse to a 20 AMP fuse... No more noise. (EDIT : Be aware though, if you do have fuses, and you are going to put in a fuse that can handle more power than what you have in there now... Make sure the WIRES you have are the correct gauge, and can handle more power going through them. The fuse is meant to stop more power draw than the wires can handle... If your wires can only handle a 15 AMP draw for instance, and you have a 20 AMP fuse in there... You run a super big risk of cooking those wires and starting a fire. So please be aware of that)
Also, one other thing to think about is how you have things plugged in. If you have an interface plugged in via USB, and have a DI plugged into your interface, but also have a direct line from your amp plugged into the interface as well, that can do it... or if you have a ton of Y connectors, splitting the signal 1500 times... Things like that. Hope I could help.
>M
13:46 yes, we have been noticing the difference between the soundcheck and the concert when the venue is full for decades. The pressence of many bodies filling the space is like stuffing the place with foam in wood structures, but it's flesh over bone. When the venue is full it all tends to sound a little (or a lot sometimes) less crispy and more muddy, that is the treble tend to appear muffled. Also a little difference in the volume in the furthest places from the stage comparing to the empty room. I have noticed this in large venues and in small bars. In this case specially if the amp cabs are directly in the ground not higher than the waist or chest of people.
Air density and temperature changing the sound? I'm not sure to which degree but i would say equipment sensitive to temperature such as tubes, strings, wood and the human throat will be affected. Sometimes after an easy soundcheck the show feels like taming wild horses if it's too hot.
Please keep pulling the wool over my eyes. I love what you do. 😎👌
I love these crossover between my favorite guitar related content creators!!!!
2:45 Since my band was only a 3 piece, I used to run ALL of the power through a "line conditioner" of some sort, a grey box that had 4 x 120outlets, every time we set up on stage. All it takes is one bad ground... your dad was right.
I love what you are doing and I appreciate your youTube channel emencly. You are making waves for the better and I hope this makes your day!
In building my home studio, I have been specifically seeking good sounding gear that is NOT what everyone has/uses or "industry standard". The surprise bonus is that now, among my friends, we have more choices of gear to share and use. Some of that gear is some of what you recommend in past videos. Lke a Drawmer compressor for drums. My DL441 was $600 used, and absolutely rocks! Thanks, dude.
2 things.
1. Noise in the studio. I had issues with noise in the signal chain in my little home studio. I currently live in a appartment that has been rebuilt to living quarters from previously being a small factory built in the 1950´s here in south Sweden. The wiring of that time was not on the same level as it would have been had the house been built during the 2000. What I have experienced is that a lot of gear is built with no ground shield. It is incased in plastic or other non conductive materials and that has caused a lot of problems for me over the years. Now adays I allways run a small cable, with an aligator clip in each end, from the ground prong from my wall outlet directly to some earth connection on my soundcard. This has solved A LOT of my noise issues during the last two years.
2. Chinese pickups. I bought 2 dual humbucker sets from Amazon and I will never do it again! The first set had a shorted Neck pickup. It sounded like a singlecoil. The other set had a missalinged hole for the pickup adjustment screw witch made it impossible to mount the pickup in the pickupframe. It was just far enough off so that it could not be redrilled to save the project. Soundwise, I could hear no differense from other brands that I have in my collection. But the overall build quality is sub zero, so don´t waste your money.
Both sets ended up in the bin, where they belong.
Nothing wrong with Chinese pickups, but I wouldn't buy from Amazon.
Artec pickups are great. Try EY music, GFS, Dragonfire, Guitarheads.
Glenn this is the best video. Lots of great questions that needs to be ask and cleaning up.
To @that_jason_black s question. Yes the atmosphere with and without bodies present makes a big difference. In a live sound context as the room fills and heats up, the air density changes and humidity increases. Dave Rat has a great explanation how these changes just above the audience on the floor can create a boundary that reflects higher frequencies.
GLEEEEENN!
My broke ass saved up for an ID14 mk2 and a Radial J48 a couple of years ago and I am very happy to report that these recommendations of yours were absolutely stellar!!!
I'm recording and gigging with free Ignite Emissary, Kvassa/Kuassa Amps and the like, putting so many things I have learned from you about IRs and mixing to good use. My Band and my friends tell me my mixes (with SSD5, all channels individually processed as to imitate a real drumkit) sound spectacular even though I've spent like 350€ on recording gear.
Just wanted to come in here and give a great big Thank You! Hope to catch a Monday Night Mix Review soon to see what you think
Hubble is a brand of industrial grade receptacles and plugs. In my opinion they are the most abuse tolerant AC Power connectors available and I would use a USED Hubble connector over a brand new connector of another brand. Ideally you use one insulated wire for hot, another insulated wire for neutral (120 VAC) a 3rd INSULATED wire for safety earth/ground, a receptacle that has the safety earth/ground isolated from the frame, and run the wire through steel conduit that is connected to earth/ground at the main circuit breaker panel. You also may need to drive conductive rods into the ground and electrically connect those rods to the Earth/Ground buss in the main circuit breaker panel. Also, the Hot, Neutral, and and Safety Ground/Earth wires should be gently twisted as that provides even more noise immunity. If you look inside any low impedance balanced microphone cable you will note that the two signal wires are twisted for improved noise rejection. Coaxial cable is crap for noise reduction.
I don't know how anyone can still deny what a huge difference the speaker makes in your tone. I have a 4x12 that I built for recording, with 4 different speakers in it. I wired it up in such a way that you can use any speaker by itself, or any combination of any of the 4 speakers in it. Since building that thing, it's been a piece of cake to get a guitar tone that sounds good and sits nicely in any mix I do. Being able to switch speakers on the fly really demonstrates the drastic change a speaker swap makes, as opposed to having a 30 minute break to swap out speakers, and forgetting what the original tone sounded like in the process of doing so.
D'Addario Tour-Grade Power Base 8 Outlet. $44. While I can’t guarantee anything, the demonstration I saw makes me think this’ll get rid of pretty much any electrical noise. My whole band plugs into these now.
They tried a power conditioner already.
Air density is definitely different with higher humidity and temperature, its also affecting the malleable texture of the speaker cone and the diaphragm of the mic. I have an environmental Science background and a guitarist of 35 years, a LOT happens to a speaker, mic, and other gear like drums with humidity and heat. COntraction and expansion would definitely change sound as well as liquids floating in between the sound source and mic or ear
I have a home electronics/computer lab and do amateur radio astronomy.
On top of really well insulated and super grounded internal power, I've also build a 3 layer faraday cage into both the lab and my office.
The outside world has become extremely electronically noisy and being able to insulate your equipment from the basic outside electronic noise that's in the very air, is something more studios should look into.
Remember, the way the microwave background radiation was discovered, was because some scientists were testing radio receivers and kept receiving this massive noise on them.
A lot of equipment, especially audio equipment, is relatively well insulated against this, but people forget they also have connectors and cables running all over the place.
And in case of guitars, you literally have big open copper coils on them to pick up and generate signals from strings vibrating in the air a distance removed from them.
Other than a full faraday cage, no level of electronic insulation can protect you against open antennas like that being a core part of making your music.
Hey Glenn, Katana gigger here. I run 3 50watt mk-2 in a wet dry wet setup. (Cover rock band) but it does the metal just fine when time and pitch effects are off.
Plain and simple, katana power amps work phenomenally for modelers, and instead of forking over $$$ for an orange pedal baby, or powerstage, just buy a 200$ katana. The 100 watt models can be used with a floor switcher to switch between presets, but the 50 watt models do not have that option. The interface on the quad cortex is much easier to use for us guitar brained people, compared to the katana tone studio which if you need to adjust global eq settings at a harsh venue, you are screwed with a katana. The other guitar player in my band uses a quad cortex and a katana for his poweramp, and he switched to the katana after having a headrush frfr and line6 power cab.
Thank You Glenn even though I don't record anything I do enjoy your videos! 👏👏🤘🤘💯💯🎸🎸🔥💙💜❤️🖤🤍. Bad wiring will F&&# up things!
Me too just enjoying the great stuff from effin maestro GF!
Going to Priest on Oct 18! You're right the main difference between "cheap chinese" and brand-name pickups are if the cheap chinese are not waxed, they're feedback machines, which can be an asset or a liability, if you're struggling with a bunch of Zakk Wylde harmonics, try an unwaxed pickup, they're great for pinch harmonics.
4:06 Hubble is a name brand. The magic phrase is "isolated ground". The ground wire isn't connected to the frame. In many commercial buildings and high-rises, the receptacle frame is connected to the conduit which is connected to the metal parts of the building. That's what you're avoiding with the isolated ground receptacle. I believe the IG receptacle is usually orange, but I'm not sure if it's an absolute "always". If the building is wood frame wired with Romex or you have plastic electrical boxes, then I don't know as a isolated ground will do anything for you. It's already isolated from everything else.
Checking from in from work 😂☠️🤘
The BEST place to watch!
Sound does propagate differently at different temperatures! But... On a studio scale it's probably not audible. It's definitely applicable in live sound situations, particularly very large outdoor stages. L'Acoustics and D&B Audiotechnik, two speaker manufacturer whose speakers are on major artists' tours (Foo Fighters and Taylor Swift, for example), take temperature and humidity into account in their prediction software to indicate how the sound will propagate -- both to the audience, and to the surrounding area. L'Acoustics' P1 processor also takes weather into account and compensates speaker EQ accordingly. I deployed a sound system on a 100-year-old sailing schooner for an audience on the water (a unique concert for paddle-boarders and kayakers). Just a pair of EVs flown from the ship's rigging carried far more distance than I expected, because sound carries over water! The cold water cools the air just above it, so sound gets ducted between the water and the warmer air above (a temperature inversion).
But all this has to do with long distances, and mostly for noise mitigation. A microphone inches from a guitar speaker? A sound difference might be measurable, but almost certainly not audible. I'm looking forward to seeing and hearing the test results!
Again with the pickups!!!
Glenn, there is now a Harley Benton DC Custom-II very similar to your blue one, I bought red one for shits and giggles, it comes with Grover tuners (which I swapped with Gotoh locking that I had extra in my box of magic parts) and it also has SS frets and new Tesla Nitro humbuggies. I don't play metal, I play classic rock sound lower overdrives, and I swapped the bridge pickup for DiMarzio DP103, and it sounds much better, but the stock neck pickup is perfect. But when I engage MXR Fullbore Metal pedal, you can't even tell the difference between humbuggies and singlecoils, so EF YOU metalheads with swapping the pickups from this to that, we don't live in the early 80's anymore where you needed to push your JCM800's to have any gain! For clean and low overdrive guys, there is a small difference between Harley Benton Tesla Nitro pickups and DiMarzio PAF style ones, but they both rock as hard as my Fluence Modern ESP E-II Viper on heavy gain!!!
Ooh, I’m looking forward to the vintage tube test!
I got excited when you said you're going ro test pickups.
I have watched this channel for a while now and I notice a lot of comments about what musicians can't hear or truly don't know or understand especially when it comes to pick-ups.. Personally I hate active pick-ups but when I hear people bashing no one knows the difference between cheap and DiMarzio it is sad, I have used DiMarzio for 30+ years And it is because the old days when I started using them there were a lot of noises different wiring, wiring didn't last and they squeeled and made bad noises since then many people got to look at what DiMarzio and other companies did different like for example why the P90 was a Gibson only product and no one could make as great but since DiMarzio has done great , Dylan's Pickups have become a great one and one of his specialty pickups.. I am sure since other companies have opened them and run tests.. Nothing is out of reach these days with many things but when I started my heroes played them so I did but since I have seen more people try to bring the same product for less ...
I have been playing since I was 7 and I used to love the pickups that came in my Ibanez guitars but between amps being sensitive or places you play having electric issues I just felt confident having MY guitars all the same so I could do the best each time and it made my playing more confident and that's what was important.. I tried many pickups and I stuck with DiMarzio because I got a great product every time .. I think that is more the reason for the other pickups than just not knowing or understanding why many players pay a extra to upgrade even tho others say they don't have to ...
Universal Audio offers both monthly payments and own it forever. They have made most (if not all) plugins available as VST, not requiring their hardware.
I've got their hardware, and had an issue years after warranty expired and had to have them repair it...called their tech support, got an RMA and had it back in about 3 days and cost less than $300 with shipping.
Their hardware is expensive, but is very flexible and sounds great.
Also, I keep all of my gear behind a voltage regulator, surge protector, and Furman filters.
I had a fuckton of noise, then my house burnt down. That got the most of the loud noise off, a new electrical box is what sorter most of it, and also 0 solid state amplification on the side valve amps go. I mean no solid state amps.. Then i have bass strings going to radiators, so i got loads of metal connected
And the Boss katana is a jazz chorus, and atleast all boss gt models have a predesigned option for output that is the powerstage of the katana, which is again jazz chorus magic.
Piggybacking off of the noisy power question, I have a possibly related issue where if I use even the slightest amount of gain then my amps start picking up radio stations. This goes for all of my amps (Fender Deluxe, Bassman, Ampeg SVT4, Marshall JCM800, Roland JC120) and has happened in the two different houses I've lived in in this area. I've tried various grounding solutions from the Humno to adding an extra ground wire that connects my surge protectors to the plumbing with no effect whatsoever. The only thing that has been a halfway decent work around is replacing the amp's input cable (which seems to double as a radio antenna) with a battery powered wireless kit. This drastically cuts the volume of the radio station such that the speaker mics don't really pick it up, but only works for as long as the charge on the wireless pack lasts (2-3 hours max). If I connect the power charge cable to wireless units while using them, then the radio stations play back at high volume. Worst of all it's usually Taylor Swift or some shit. Ever encounter this problem and if so, what was the solution? ...hopefully not to move to another city.
Humidity can really change the sound. If it's noticeable in a studio would be interesting to test though. But if you want proof, just compare how things sound outside on a clear, dry day compared to a very foggy day. Yes, there's more to it than 'just' the humidity (eg. fog...) but it's a fairly simple way to hear that it does make a change.
Again, I don't know how much the relatively small humidity changes in a confined space like a studio change the sound. Thinking as an engineer I can even see humidity affect the speakers and microphones. Speaker cones are mostly made from paper or cloth, so they do absorb moisture, which changes the characteristics of the materials. Would LOVE to see a comparison on that ;) "wet" vs "dry" speaker cones ;)
I use a combination of a Hum-X that I plug into the wall and a power bar into the Hum-X. I also added an Electro Harmonix Hum-Debugger to the front of my pedal chain to get rid of the florescent light hum that I was getting on my single coils (my Rick 4003 was especially bad - Yes, I'm a bass player). This combination seems to work for me.
If noise changes based on the orientation of your guitar, it's an appliance (fluorescent lights? Computer monitor?) interacting with your guitar. This is a common problem with single coil pickups, but less so with humbuckers (noise is the reason humbuckers were invented). A dummy coil could help if you're using single coils, but I don't know of any metal guys using single coils.😄
Also, we had a dimmer switch on our studio lights that was causing a ton of noise.
Hi Glenn, cool thing is since you are a metal shop I can agree with you about pickups not making a difference. When I engage my Boss Metal Zone through my 100 watt Marshall 2555 into a 4 X 12 cab with green backs cranked to jet engine at afterburner I can’t tell pickup differences. (Just kidding about the volume). I agree speakers and cabinet build are key to a great metal sound. A little compression helps. I perform Blues and Pop Rock so pickups matter in these circumstances. Additionally I’m a Helix/Tonex and Katana user so with my style pickups matter.
I enjoy learning from you and all you advice is sound. Keep teaching up and thanks a bunch.
Unplugging everything first is definitely a good idea - I had to do that in a previous apartment to find a wicked hum, and it turned out to be my then-10yo HP printer. Unplugging the printer solved the problem, and a new Canon replaced the HP soon after. Current policy: no printers in the studio.😎
I had a noise problem that I chased around for a couple weeks. It was really frustrating.. I bought several of the gadgets including a giant power conditioning box. It's a really big, and heavy, power strip thing that was supposed to isolate and condition the power. It didn't work. I also borrowed a humno from a friend which also didn't work. Finally, I tried a noise pedal which ended up working great, and I didn't have to turn it up that high at all so it didn't choke out the guitar sound. We guessed that it was some type of interference that messes up the sound after all the gadgets. I could try to chase it down, but the pedal works amazingly well so I didn't bother.
I have an old poster on my wall that says: "I'm only responsible for what I say. Not for what You understand!" That could and should be a disclaimer on Glenn's videos. And perhaps a t-shirt :) Great work by the way!
re: dirty DI -- If all else has been addressed (instrument shielding, cable, RF interference), you might try plugging the bare minimum of gear needed to record a DI (computer, interface, monitor?) into a UPS with a decent battery backup time and disconnect it from the house AC before hitting record.
13:38 Yes! The presence of the audience does make a difference. Check out David Rat's video "Audience Heat Messes With Concert Sound" where he shows that with a scale model experiment.
I don't know as that would make a difference in a recording studio, but I could see it making a difference with paper cone speakers as it could change the dynamics of the speaker.
I have crappy electrical in my practice room and have this dirty power problem. Even humbucking pickups buzz slightly. Morley Humno didn't help. What did help was running an extension cord to the bathroom which has a GFCI outlet. Might help short of having to do major rewiring.
Grounding issues, dirty power, could also be EMI creeping in. Fortunately you can buy EMI detectors, fairly cheap, at most hardware stores...at least the big box stores. Super easy to use.
And if that doesn't work, then you still have an EMI detector to keep you safe when you're messing around with wires.
6:35 I changed out the pickups in my Michael Kelly from the Rosewill pickups to Gibson 70’s tributes. The Gibson pickups were higher output and less noisy but they only sounded marginally clearer over the Rosewill pickups. So it’s down to preference for the SLIGHT differences in sounds. I ran them through an MT-15 with an Eminence DV-77. They really don’t sound much different. I’m glad I listened to you and bought the pickups for $240 instead of wasting thousands on a Gibson just to get slightly quieter pickups.
Love your channel!
This is why I built my studio at 6000’. The air is better for most types of music. Also, if you will recall, this had something to do with why Dethklok recorded their album in a submarine.
A GFCI outlet helped me with that noise problem. If circuit is poorly grounded, you won't get rid of it, this is usually the case with an old house/wiring.
we can confirm that temperature can somewhat change the overall sound in the practice room.. we used to play in a garage and in winter it was quite cold at the beginning of the rehearsal but as the temperature changed the longer the gas heater was on.. the overall sound in the room changed somewhat too.
I watched one of your live mix reviews and it was dope. Lets
do more
Of that!! Love the content thanks Glenn
When you have hum, you need to make sure the electric installation has a grounding system implemented, we here call it javelin. I had that issue in my parents house, we couldn't install a javelin, so I ordered a EB Tech Hum Eliminator from Amazon in 2012 and it helped a lot, also changing my tubes from the stock chinese Peavey Red tubes to Sovteks helped. Hum is so annoying...
Glenn you recommending the ToneX was a cure for my GAS. I was able to use the captures and not dealing with the space and clutter and also get use out of my rigs (Joyo Meteor, H&K Tonemeister 39, Traynor Reverb Mate 40) without putting hours on some of the tube amps and older hardware. Really makes my life easier to preserve equipment in a time where tubes are becoming more expensive and scarce. The eco system is great and enjoy your channel and no bullshit advice. I don't get how people can be such idiots and understand the value of being able to preserve your amp sounds and using this with existing effects.
Anyway thanks man and rock on!
Great episode!
All the due needs is a power conditioner - or even less expensive line USP. Battery voltage is always going to give a clean pure sine wave. This is basically a must-have for serious reproduction equipment - and if there's a turntable i place - there's no way around no matter where you live. Shared electricity is always going to be "dirty". So start with battery and dc to ac converter - see if that helps. if not - problem is with amp.
There was one You tube video I say where a guy had hum issues , he isolated just his amp and guitar and still had the hum , he actually went to his neighbors and plug in , same hum , come to find out after a long time of messing with it , it was a ground loop at the central node the entire neighborhood connected too and the only way to get it fixed was from the power company and he had called them several times but they said it was not a issue , until one guy decided to test away from the house , he found it.
That doesn't make sense.
Every meter is individually grounded on site.
@@vorpalblades well he had hum , i'll find the video , can not remember if it was a ground or if it was something more wierd.
I had an electrical noise in my upstairs of house, tried the best gold plated 100$ cables. Power conditioner everything, made a slight difference.
But after i built my soundroom in the basement. All new electrics, panel, etc. Noise was gone.
Hey Glenn. A few years ago I changed the pickups in my Chinese Telecaster to Seymour Duncans. I forgot what date I did it and just listened to those old recordings. Low and behold I can't pinpoint the date without looking it up. I'm shocked I tell you... shocked! Keep up the great content
Oh, it's real. This dude answered my questions a ton of times.
Glen, there’s nothing wrong with splurging on an expensive piece of gear if you can afford it. I wouldn’t recommend buying something expensive just for the name or peer pressure, especially if you don’t have the money. But I love how you share alternatives for those who cannot or do not want to spend it. Keep it up, love the show!
One of the comments reminded me of a quick story: 2nd guitarist in the band I was in about 8 to 9 years ago talking about how if his guitar was alder like Alexi's he would sound much better. I countered with "yeah, reminds me of my lamp. If it were wood instead of ceramic i'd be able to see better at night." He said that doesn't make sense and I said to explain it to me in a way that it does. He took about 30 seconds to think, realized what I was getting at and kept his mouth shut. Kept that same guitar to this day, actually. Funny how thinking for a little bit works, doesn't it? Lol
I put a Celestion FX12 FRFR speaker inside a Katana 100 and it is AWESOME! Just plug your modeller into the power amp in
As someone whose first guitar had cheap Chinese pickups, here's my personal experience: it probably depends on the company. Had two guitars made by the same company (S101), and while they were fine at bedroom levels, no noise gate on earth could silence the ungodly squealing in a full band situation. Switched pickups out, and while the squealing was gone, I really never noticed a difference in base tone.
My favorite cheap bass in my Rogue LX 205 Series 3. It’s nothing fancy or flashy, but plays well. I hate fat necks on guitars, but that one plays well and I barely notice it. I think I got it on sale for like 80 bucks on Amazon during a holiday sale a few years back.
The finish comes off really easily, but it’s a good low budget bass for when I travel and dont want my higher end instruments getting messed up or stolen. Again, it’s nothing crazy, but for the price I got it at and what I use it for, it was basically a steal.
Was hoping you could dispel/confirm something for me. "Fender amps can't do metal" I have a Hot Rod DeVille and every time I tell people that, it's instantly you can't use that for metal. With a decent distortion pedal I can get absolutely ripping tone, but nobody will even give me a chance. Could you maybe rent a Hot Rod Deluxe/DeVille and see what you can get out of it? They're not crazy expensive and might be a good tube amp option for some folks who can find a good deal on one used. Fuck you very much Glenn!!
You absolutly can. Some Desert Rock/Sludge/Doom bands use Fender amps with fuzz boxes and whatnot.
I really like the Hot Rods
Those people don’t know shit. You absolutely can, the right pedal tightens those up just peachy. The amp itself might be difficult to do metal alone, but a pedal will easily push that one into the zone.
I recommend you two watch Jim Lill's video about amp tone (and all his other videos, to be fair).
The main takeaway is that there's no secret sauce to amps, and it's possible to make very different amps produce the exact same sound if you know how to control the variables like frequency response from different EQ circuits.
@@aozora7 the best amp is the one you can put your hands on. Same for the speakers, fx, guitars and basses, etc.
There's a lot of idiots that want to plug straight into amps and get the perfect metal tone with no pedals. Especially on Reddit r/guitaramps.
Noise: Turn off any lights that have a dimmer switch, move any wifi modems out of the room, keep guitars away from computers, turn off anything with a fan.
Last, a power isolation transformer might work by eliminating ground loops.
A friend had the same ground issue and it was the freaking neon lamp he had hangin' on the wall.
14:30 TONEWEATHER YES. Please do the toneweather episode.
For the guy with the electricy and noise problem.. another option is to buy a large LFP powerpack like an Ecoflow or Bluetti and run the amp/modeller/computer etc in isolation from one of those. Also turn off all fluorescent lights, take LED lights off the mains, move them FAR away from any amplification/drive pedals etc.
I don't know about the density of the air in a hall, but the presence of lots of people makes a HUGE difference in the sound even in an acoustically treated theatre.
As for the Air comment, Ill say it, in venues when room filling up and it gets warmer . It happened to me or even other engineer we get little feedback around 6k-8khz. Even after a spotless soundcheck... Of course people absorb sound which is why you should always check your max headroom in a soundcheck especially your low end. Often subs are positionned at ground level so bodies will absorb it. Remember a live mix has to push through your body and not slaughtering your ears. I come across way too many engineers mostly mixing in the high end spectrum.
For Mark's issue @2:12 Glenn's idea may very well work. However if not, I'd also suggest getting a sinewave UPS to run your computer and gear from. Like a Cyber Power PFC Sinewave for example. That would for sure provide a clean electrical signal. It will cost much more than Glenn's idea, but may cost less than moving. Best of luck!
It's not recommended to run like it indefinitely, but if just for a recording session or gig putting a non-grounded power extension in between usually takes any ground related noise away. Sometimes grounding can also cause high pitched sounds, pops and noise running a laptop with a grounded plug. Not saying it's a fix, but a non-grounded power extension is something I always carry in my gearbag for obvious reasons. I have tried ferrite beads but haven't had success eliminating ground related noise where present.
GLLLLLLLLLLLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEENNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
About that Quad Cortex and Boss Katana as a power amo guy. Well, I own a Boss Katana Mk II myself and on one side I love it and on one side I just hate it. First of all you've got all of these nice effects. But some of these sound like 💩. If you're trying to get a nice Metal tone, the Boss katana is great for you but it still has two little details I don't like about it: You just have three IRs (Sound is in the speaker, so why no option to load in multiple IRs yourself?) and i order to have a footswitch, you need to buy one seperatly, while the Quad Cortex has none of those problems. The only annoying thing about the QC is the little sound-gap you get between switching presets, which the Boss Katana doesn't have. Anyways thanks for the effort you put into your videos! Greetings from Germany
For noise, make sure there are no flourescant lights around, either. Often overlooked, especially for the "green" folks.
I had a similar noise problem with my monitors. I tried them in my neighbour's house next door and they were silent. I then moved them back to the studio and then ran a long power supply cable in through the window from my neighbour's just to trouble shoot, and the fizz came back. It turns out my studio had a direct line of sight to a cluster of mobile phone antennas on a nearby block. I moved the studio to another room, problem solved...
Cheers from Windsor Ontario going to the back stage tonight to see apogean cognitive and benighted . Hope you have a good weekend
Every body in a concert hall acts like a Big bag of water, absorbing and diffusing parts of the sound, Mostly dampen LF
As the crowd increases in size and density there is an 'upcurrent' caused by the combined body heat, which can have an effect on the HF throw (that is, how far the High frequencies will travel), basically causing a diversion towards the sky/ceiling.
There are AES (Audio Engineers Society) papers regarding each of these factors.
There are also mentions of these effects in 3 chapters of the Don Davis Bible for live sound "Sound System Engineering".
Pickups - For the past few years I’ve been trying to find good, cheap gear. I ended up with Fleur pickups. They’re great, cheap, but with adjustable pole pieces, wax potted and great customer service. For the bridge, I ordered an alnico 5 in 8k and 15k ohm and a ceramic 15k ohm. Yes they were all very slightly different in tone. The odd part seemed to be that the 8k had no balls at all, may have been faulty. My 2 cents. Keep up the great work.
I feel like if different temperatures and humidity do make a detectible sound difference it may not necessarily be because the air is different but also because it affects the equipment slightly.
Glen's the coolest! Very inspirational and how!
2:11 I have the same problem with my Rode M5 small diaphragm condenser pair. I tried to record my acoustic guitar but some digital noise, which sounds like bitcrushing in irregular intervalls is present and is recorded as well. First I thought the mics were broken, but I got them examined in my local music store. They didn't have any issues of that kind. The curious thing is, that one of them doesn't have this problem while the other one has. I switched channels and cables then. The cable change did somehting, but at the next time it was gone. The same thing happens when I hook my Roland synth via MIDI in my Behringer U-Phoria 404. I read something about magnetic resonance by the HDD, but it only affects one of them and the synth. My guitars and bass guitars have no issues at all. Do you something Glenn?
Hubbell is the brand they are simply IG or isolated ground receptacles. Agree with you on dedicated circuits aswell.
Glenn did a show a few years ago where he got rid of all his voice track background noise using izotope rx. I've been using that to eliminate all noise from whatever the source. Just record a few seconds of only the noise on the armed track.
#1 might be having a noise issue with the power co.'s overhead lines. Where I live there is a mile plus long distributed 120/240V line fed with multiple (yet all overloaded) transformers. 8AM to 8PM the noise drowns out any pickup signal and after 8PM you only have to be 200 feet from the road to have a chance. And stand 90 degrees to the power lines.
Steve on the show? Yay!
about the vintage tubes test you are planning to make, I would suggest cranking them up to 100%, they're supposed to add harmonic distortion when they go beyond a certain point where they're no longer responding linearly (I think)