What a noise!

[sensei]

Hey all,

I have a pretty simple set up. Guitar to either an overdrive or distortion pedal to my amp. No bells or whistles.

Here's the problem. In some places, when I plug in, and turn the distortion pedal on, there is a lot of background static. It mostly goes away when actually playing.

The sound is there only in some places, others everything sounds great.

I've heard that it might be "bad grounding", whatever that is. Any thoughts?

What can I do to fix it?

Thanks for any help.

[Spudman]

Can you post a clip of it?

[tunghaichuan]

In addition to the clip:

What guitar? Amp? Pedal?

tung

[Gutmann]

Does the problem appear with both pedals?
Do you use batteries or a power supply unit (maybe a daisy chain..)
Have you tried another cable?

Uli

[mrmudcat]

Check your cables if cheap there ya go:thwap:

[sensei]

Thanks all for the input. Let me answer your questions...

Guitar: Peavey T-15
Amp: Marshall G10
Pedals: Danelectro Black Coffee Distortion
" " Pastrami Overdrive

Cables: Yes, el cheapos
Batteries: No, always ac adapters

The noise only happens with the distortion pedal.

At my office sound is great. At home in my usual practice room sound is good. In my friends garage also good.

In the back porch at home lots of noise.

Also, sometime switching to the bridge pickup lessens the noise.

I will try to post a clip tonight if possible.

Thanks for the help

[mrmudcat]

Internal noise from house wiring is a big cause for noise of course when you distort you will gain noise adding fuzzy,hiss snap .crackle and pop:D Nature of the beast!

They make both noise suppressors and ones that plug into outlets that take the hummming type noises out!

[sensei]

All right...are we talkin' about a "noise gate" pedal? or something from an electrical parts store?

[duhvoodooman]

Internal noise from house wiring is a big cause for noise of course when you distort you will gain noise adding fuzzy,hiss snap .crackle and pop:D Nature of the beast!
+1. Distortion pedals are basically "gain machines" with some signal clipping. They'll do a heckuva job of amplifying spurious background noise. Sounds like you've probably got 60Hz AC "mains" noise getting in there when playing on your porch. Another possibility--got any fluorescent lights out there on the porch? Notorious noise source!