Weird Noise

Anyone?

put up a recording maybe?

Hi folks, I got one stumping me. Any time I play a patch on my LP with a fair amount of gain or distortion, the guitar makes an awful racket. It's mostly like an echo or unwanted reverbertion, and it goes through the line too and gets processed and spit out along with the rest of the audio.

I just lowered my pickups again and it seems to have helped a litle bit.

Sometimes it sounds like it's slap-back (?) from the fret board(?).

Does anyone have any ideas?

Did you change strings to see if it went away?

Doesn't do it clean?

Doesn't do it straight in to the amp?

Doesn't do it in another room?

Just the one guitar?

Any specific note or notes? one string?

Does it stop when you touch:
stopbar
any string between the stopbar and the bridge
bridge
any particular saddle on the bridge
knob
switch
jack
pickguard
pickup cover
pickup ring
tuner post
tuning peg
tuner gear/gearbox
any string between the nut and the tuning peg
anything else that might have an infinitesimal chance of being loose and generating sympathetic vibrations
anything that might couldn't POSSIBLY be loose and generate sympathetic vibrations

Doesn't do it with different cables (swap 'em all if you can - else one at a time)

Are the pickups microphonic?

Link to sound clip below.

One thought I had was that I may be in some way too aggressively picking with a pick?
put up a recording maybe?
Good idea. I just did an on and off again note. Happens on each pickup and starts getting more prominent after abou 3-5 seconds. First part is neck p/u, second part is bridge. About 4 seconds or so in between parts.

http://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=9792648

Thanks
Did you change strings to see if it went away? No.

Doesn't do it clean? Yes, but you have to try really hard, exspecially at my low volumes.

Doesn't do it straight in to the amp? Yes X2amps

Doesn't do it in another room? Yes.

Just the one guitar? No. One does do it more than another one, though. My Squire Tele. (which was also used for sound sample)

Any specific note or notes? one string? G-B-E maybe D as well, but way down the neck if at all.

Does it stop when you touch: I Don't Know any of this below. It does not last long after I strike the note.
stopbar any string between the stopbar and the bridge
bridge
any particular saddle on the bridge
knob
switch
jack
pickguard
pickup cover
pickup ring
tuner post
tuning peg
tuner gear/gearbox
any string between the nut and the tuning peg
anything else that might have an infinitesimal chance of being loose and generating sympathetic vibrations
anything that might couldn't POSSIBLY be loose and generate sympathetic vibrations I did a check on both guitars and did not find anything.

Doesn't do it with different cables (swap 'em all if you can - else one at a time) Yes

Are the pickups microphonic? I don't know. The Squire has Fender American Standard s/c and the Epi LP is stock HB.

Thanks again. :D

With the problem occurring on multiple amps and multiple guitars. I'd say you had something in the room vibrating with those frequencies. Yeah . . . that can sound like it's coming from the guitar. OR, the amps possibly have loose screws in there somewhere.

Best way to check is to see what happens outside with the amps on the sidewalk, pointed away from the house or anything else that could reflect sound back.

Thanks again, moonrider.

I probably did fail to make clear that these sound clips were done without amps or even mnitors involved. I was using headphones and recorded GT-10 to Reaper. No audible sound was heard in the room outside of my headphones. If someone was in the room, the only noice they would have heard was pick on string (or probably better put, the Tele's natural accoustics) . Very puzzling.

"Curiouser and Curiouser," said Alice.

Do you wear a watch?

No watch. No wedding band either. It got damaged in a freak accident. Nothing metal on me. I think I'll double/triple check all of the measurements for set-up.

From what I hear in that clip - it sounds to me like a lot of reverb combined with treble creating an "over-ringing" effect...

Maybe set all tone to flat & start from there?

I'm assuming you are picking the notes several times, and the issue is the modulated noise tails at a lower level. sounds to me as if a compressor in the patch is "breathing" a bit (changing gain), and that is modulating any resonances/reverberations (real or simulated) and noise. does the patch have any dynamically variable non-linear sections such as compressor, expander, noise gates? if so, turn off any of those sections and see what happens. if not, then try lowering the gain a bit to see if that starts to fix it ...

BTW don't set your pups too low, as that degrades your signal-to-interference ratio right from the output of your pups. if they are set to recommended distance from the strings, then it is actually better to use your volume knob to reduce pup level, as that will cut simultaneously and equally both string signals as well as any EMI snagged directly by the pups. if lowering your pups is improving the weird noise problem, then you may need to reduce gain somewhere in the line-up.

Grrrrr, I accidently deleted post thanking everyone and answering and talking about some points that gnease and katmetal both brought up. I'll paraphrase.

Thanks again to those who have responded. I'll figure out a testing procedure and have at it tomorrow.

The sound clip used a patch with lots of reverb, a Tube Screamer emulator, and it is both cranked up and toned up. GT-10 has a "Tone" adjustment on most all of the OD/DS emulators. It's -50 to +50. This one's at +30. The "Solo sw" is also turned on. The solo sw changes the tone to "one more suitable for solos" as well as adjusts to the volume you set for the "SoloLevel". In this case, I had left it the same, so only a tone change occurred....which of course can increase volume.

It's got a good bit of reverb on it, but not overboard.

The Noise Supressor has only three settings, and is always on. Even after initializing a new patch. (which means wiping a patch out and starting with a clean slate. You get this unless you go to global system settings and undo it) The three settings are "Threshold", "Release" and "Detect". all of these are defaults and I've never changed them. the first two are 0-100 and set at 30. The third, "Detect", is set to "Input" with options of "NS Input" and "FV Out" available.

I test out the NS'ers to see if they do anything to cause this, but after that, I think I'll eliminate Reverb just to remove from equation. That will leave me with the Pre-amp (a normally tame Fender Twin emulator), the Tube Screamer and the compressor. I have a feeling that it will be a combination of things you've mentioned. The chain, btw, will be Guitar -> Compressor -> Tube Screamer -> Pre Amp -> Noise suppressor -> Foot Volume -> Reverb.

The Foot Volume is set a lot. Not sure if it's default or what. I leave that experession pedal all the way down all the time just because it's used as a volume control so often. It's that way for lots the factory patches and is even defaulted to being in use fot initialized (clean slates) patches. On a side note, I'm thnking of eliminating it from defaulted use....if I can.

Any testing for a buzz or noise issue should be done with no effects. Period. No reverb. No overdrive. No compression. Nada. Zilch. Guitar and amp only. Then you'll be able to hear what's actually happening without effects masking it.

If it's an EFFECTS issue, then NO amount of adjustments to the GUITAR OR AMP will fix it. This one prime reason I prefer single-purpose stompboxes in my effects chain. It makes isolation and identification of problems far easier. If the problem goes away when I pull a box out of the chain, then I know "what" and can narrow in on "why".

Any testing for a buzz or noise issue should be done with no effects. Period. No reverb. No overdrive. No compression. Nada. Zilch. Guitar and amp only. Then you'll be able to hear what's actually happening without effects masking it.
That's where my faulty thinking was on this to begin with. I was thinking guitar(s) were at fault and even represented it that way to begin with. Part of the thinking is that the effects were amplifying guitars' defects. "I set them up, so maybe I set them all up improperly" was another thought I had.

After some on/off testing with various "pedals" in my patch, it turned out to be the Spring Reverb emulation in the GT-10 that did it. I don't recall actually choosing "Spring" as the reverb type, but it did and it's there. I tried other variations of reverb without adjusting anything and the odd noise doesn't happen. In short, the Spring type Reverb in my GT-10 is giving me fits. I'm not even sure which setting. I reduced all of them one at a time and the best I got was an improvement. It's got to be a combo of settings, and could very well be in combination with other effects going on.

My testing today was actually simple. I did my test, heard the noise and started by turning off the compressor. I did the test again. The odd noise still there. I turned the compressor back on. I repeated the same thing for the OD/DS (Tube screamer) and the pre-amp. I skipped over the NS and went to Reverb. Killed the reverb and the noise was gone.

I've used this same reverb in several patches in this section including a clean patch which was the starting point for a bunch of patches with different OD/DS options. "Clean", of course, meaning no OD/DS in the patch. I would save it in a slot, add a different overdrive to the mix, tweek and move on. Got probably a dozen I did this to. I only went through the reverb settings once, and that was to lower the effect level and reduce a couple other settings. It was too much reverb out of the gate. I guess it's still too much.
If it's an EFFECTS issue, then NO amount of adjustments to the GUITAR OR AMP will fix it. This one prime reason I prefer single-purpose stompboxes in my effects chain. It makes isolation and identification of problems far easier. If the problem goes away when I pull a box out of the chain, then I know "what" and can narrow in on "why".
This one (GT-10) allows for individual effects and lets you put effects in the chain anywhere you want. It's kind of a digital set-up of my analog set-up in the other room. Just a hundred less pedals in the other room. :)

edit: So, I guess this should be in the "from Here to There" section. :lol:
edit-2: I could also turn off the pre-amp and use this only as a collection of effect pedals.....digital, of course. It's all rather flexible.