humming

whenever i turn on my distortion and turn the volume up there's a humming sound. i've had this for a while and i can't seem to figure out what's wrong.

Of course!

The distortion channel, or stompbox, or whatever, has more gain than a clean channel. This means that any sound from your guitar gets amplified more, including the hum. I'm sure if you turned the 'clean' volume way up, you'd hear hum there, too. Of course if you accidently brush the strings while you're crouched in front of your amp, you may have trouble hearing much of anything for the next few days!

http://www.guitarnuts.com has very good advice about hum-proofing guitars. Or at least improving them.

Get a Noise Gate. You can adjust the threshold to keep everything silent until you actually start playing.

Do you play next to your PC? Because the screen is a hum source!!

yes, but my pc is off. does that make a difference?

if it's off, it won't give you hum!!

humming.. could be your pots volume/tone/etc, or a loose wire, or not earthed properly,( if your using single coils they will hum anyway, most times)maybe your amp? could be the wring in your house,lots of reasons..I'd start @ the guitar tho, check your wiring and pots etc..good luck! =)

well ....i think its mainly ur guitar ...especially the pickups......if ur guitar has single coil pickups....there is nothing much u can do to do eliminate the humming.Well Mine did and i tried shielding it and a lot more other things and it didn't work....there r ways to lessen it...if ur guitar have a 5 tone selector ...use the 2nd and 4th one ....this will use 2 pickups instead of one thus lessening it....
the other way is to cut down on the treble on ur amp setting.If u got the dough....buy a noise suppressor but wouldn't recommend that.....Lastly, the best thing to do if u could cough up a lit bit of cash ...u could buy a double coil pickup....u could do the wiring and stuff by urself and its quite simple....it'll save lots of money and also get rid of the problem...well that would be my advice because that's wat i did...u'll get better sustain and the sound will be more powerful.....enjoy!!

hum hum hum hum.
that **** pisses the crap out of me(screams). I had to deal with a humming guitar for two years. if you want to kill it kill the guitar or just shield you guitar with special paint or paint. that worked for me and and took my head aches away.
take care and rock hard.

well.....if u wanna try shielding guitar,it does lessen the humming but it'll still be there.Go to this site

http://www.guitarnuts.com/wiring/index.html


it has very detail instructions on how to shield ur guitar and other mods' u could do on ur guitar.A great site to visit and to expand ur knowledge.Btw,would u mind stating wat guitar u have....exp : pickups(double or single),strat or tele....brand?

Hi everyone. As you all said... humming is annoying enough to make you literally want to smash the **** out of your guitar. I've had an Ibanez RG 270 for ages now, and it's suddenly started to hum really badly - especially when gain's turned up. I'm not so good on the tekky side of things, but I'm POSITIVE it's an earthing wire come loose, cos if it is humming, and then you touch one of the tuning nobs, or the metal bridge, it supresses it loads. My pedal's got an inbuilt gate, so it's quiet when not playing. But when I'm playing something quietly it's always there. NNNNNNNNRRRRGH. How can I fiddle and check the earthing wires? Maybe it's the amp? There's no comp around? Maybe the guitar??? I dont know! Any advice PLEASE!!!

Check out the how-to articles here and do the mods they show you. Guitar Nuts has been mentioned a couple of times already in this thread, but it bears repeating. This is useful information that could save your life! Read and heed!

Thanks a lot Lordathestrings...

I'll check it out. Just one thing - what's guitar Nuts?! Hopefully the thingy'll explain!

I also have humming, but only at home. It has something to do with the earth, that is bridged with the N-line. (It's an old house, the don't do that anymore)

Old wiring can be scary. You may want to get an isolation transformer for your amps AC line, and find a good ground (like a cold water pipe) to connect to your rig.