The Electra Forums

We play at one venue where I get noise in my effect pedal. It's an older ART multi effect, and the noise is only on the distortion effect. The club doesn't want us to turn off the neon signs. Anyone have some good advice?

Can you ground your plug (3-prong plug) or make sure the club has the neon plug grounded? Is it an old venue where no 3 prong outlets are available?

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"This is the way that pop ends, Not with a BANG but with a box set whose fourth disc you never get around to playing” - Simon Reynolds

"My guitar wants to kill your Mama" - Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention

Everything I've got is grounded, and from what I could see so were the neon signs. The power supply for my digital pedal isn't grounded though, it's just a 2 prong plug.

Are batteries an option? Otherwise you would have to find some way to shield the pedal which could get tricky.

Power conditioner?

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"If it ain't been in the pawnshop,it can't play the blues" R.L.Burnside

Your on the right track with a power conditioner... really oughta have one anyway just to filter out the hum from CFLs etc. as we are beginning to use more and more of that style lighting everywhere and less incandescent, seems what's good for the environment, isn't exactly friendly to our sound... a HumX filter works well on my church rig, I forget the model # but we have trough fluorescent lighting all the way around our sanctuary and CFLs in the ceiling, anything singlecoil picks up hums up bad... EQ out at about 1k seemed to help too but its right in the middle of the bandwidth on guitar so I could only pull it down a little... the filter works better. IMO.

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2253w, its not a MPC or a set neck, but it is a sweet tele custom tribute.

Good call on the incandescent bulb - they will go the way of the vinyl LP. I never thougt of neon as a source for interference, but CFL's will be everywhere.

I've heard more about this over the past year than ever. A power conditioner not only protects your rig but cleans up a lot of noise. They have models in all price ranges too.

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SlmGuy

Update: We did another gig at that club last weekend, and I got the OK to unplug the neon signs as needed, and found one serious offender that was a 90% buzz kill. I only had noise in one distortion patch, so it was a much better gig for me.