Best hum reducer/eliminator pedal?

[N0_Camping4U]

I run a small setup when I play guitar - Jaguar, blonde Showman, surfy bear, and a trem pedal. Occasionally one more pedal, But my rig usually hums pretty loud (for my ears, at least). I've seen there are numerous hum reducers and wondering if anyone has one and what they say about it. My roommate got one years ago but it kind of messed with the decay of notes - though he had many many pedals and perhaps had it in the wrong spot in the chain.

Any recommendations out there?

[Larry Mal]

They taught me in school that the best way to deal with noise is to not have it in the first place.

Might sound like a dick answer but I'd recommend looking into every other thing first, shielding, noiseless pickups, power line conditioners, making sure your amp is running perfectly, and all the rest. Because like your friend found out, once you try and pull noise from the rest of the sound you will find out that you are removing some of the sound you actually want.

Every single time. There is no technology that will remove only the noise you don't want, never has been, never will, so consider it a last resort. Stop noise before it happens.

[DeathJag]

After taking Larry’s advice, try an $80 HumX by Ebtech. I use a similar rig as yours and that thing really killed the worst noise. Use it for the amp and one of the pedals, and plug the third device in straight.

Dan

[Larry Mal]

Well, an Ebtech Hum Eliminator breaks up ground loops and certainly is a good thing to have, but the concept there is that they stop noise before it becomes a problem. This is from their manual:

"The Hum EliminatorTM is a unity gain signal and ground path isolator designed to break ground loops. Hum and noise caused by the presence of a ground loop can be stopped by inserting the Hum Eliminator in the line level signal path (+4dBu or -10dBV). This eliminates the ground loop without degrading your signal. The Hum Eliminator will not reduce hum or noise normally generated by a piece of equipment. In other words, for noisy preamps and noisy single coil pickups, a noise gate is the proper solution."

And that's the kind of thing I was talking about when I mentioned "power line conditioning", which was a little vague. But that's a good call for something to use, I've owned one for years and it hasn't ever solved a problem I've had but it is only designed to solve one problem and one problem only, so I guess I didn't have that or didn't treat it properly. Here's from their section on guitars:

"Many guitar players use rack and pedal effects. They can get buzz from ground loops that these devices create. Use a Hum EliminatorTM to eliminate that buzz. When using two or more guitar amplifiers, ground loops can form between the amplifiers. Because of the tremendous amounts of gain in guitar amps, the buzz can get so bad that the amplifiers will actually squeal (especially with tube amplifiers). Simply run the feed to each amp through one channel of a Hum Eliminator."

So yeah, look to stuff like the Ebtech device to try and stop noise from happening in the first place.

[somanytoys]

There are many types of products out there that do different things.

I haven’t tried their Hum-X for the outlet, because I had already bought an expensive Furman power conditioner. But I do have their Hum Eliminator that you use with cables, and I have an ISP Decimator pedal - mentioning that because it sounds like it may be similar to what your friend may have used.

The hum eliminator works well, as long as the loop is occurring through the cables. If the problem is with the amp & power source instead, the Hum-X may work for that situation.

It seems like the easiest way to tell is if you’re getting noise from the amp with nothing plugged in. If it only starts as you introduce guitar. cables & pedals, that should mean it’s a cable thing.

If the amp makes noise on its own, it could be one of a few things:

-a loop from the outlet (Hum-X may work)

-something’s wrong with the amp (try it in other rooms and then maybe in another house, if necessary)

-there’s a fader-type light controller on the same circuit as your amp (even when the light’s off), or something else is plugged in nearby that’s introducing noise into the circuit’s electrical feed

-the wiring to the outlet isn’t really grounded - plugging just the amp in another room or at another house will let you know if that’s the case.

It’s not a bad idea to have both of those products, but you should try to figure out what the nature of your problem is - electricity or connections - and start there.

[tdbajus]

Just to expand on what Larry was saying- have you tried using a high quality power supply? If you are properly shielded, grounded, and have eliminated your ground hum, most of the time you should be pretty good.

I'm absolutely shocked that the TrueTone power brick works so well- it's half the price of a Voodoo Lab supply, and far more versatile. Haven't missed my VL supply in the 6 or so years that I replaced it.

[Larry Mal]

This guy here?

https://truetone.com/cs12/

[Embenny]

When I was younger, I used a Rocktron Hush pedal. I found a spot in my signal chain that cut down on hum without musically-relevant impact on sustain, but it definitely impacted tone (it's just a notch filter, basically). I found a way to compensate somewhat for that impact on the tone elsewhere in the chain, but ultimately I realized I needed source control rather than bandaids, as Larry said.

For me, part of that was accepting that I really just prefer low noise/humcanceling pickups. There are so many great designs out there these days that I've been taking my time exploring them and have been much happier, and less frustrated, than I was before. I'd probably be losing my mind if a singer, keyboardist, or horn player showed up to play or record with gear that hummed as loudly as some guitar gear. "But you lose the subtlety of the flugelhorn tone without the hum, I might as well be playing a trumpet!" would seem like a poor excuse for introducing baseline hum into the mix, so I apply that same standard to my own gear these days.

I do still have a couple of vintage instruments with single coils, but I pretty much use those on my own for my own pleasure or for recording on my own time where I can fuss with things to get them quiet enough.

Keeping your amp in good running shape, eliminating ground loops, shielding the guitar, swapping out any outboard gear with bad SNR that can't be fixed...I'd start with all of those before turning to any pedal-based fix. As soon as you reach for a Rocktron Hush or equivalent gear, you might as well change out the single coils, because the impact on your tone will be at least as large and less definitive a solution.

[tdbajus]

This guy here?

https://truetone.com/cs12/

I meant to paste the link myself. That's it. I have two of them (you can use a y cable to increase current, so they work great for my Really Nice Levelling Amplifier and a few pedals I use in a drum machine setup!) an d they friggin' rule. I enjoy the Magical Fairy Dust that 18V provides, and it has two dedicated taps, plus plenty of space for a couple of y cables that double the voltage (not the same as the y cable that double current).

Right now on my pedal board it's supplying 18V to a King Of Tone*, my Xotic compressor, as well as enormous amounts of current to my 60 Second Digital Delay and my Boomerang III, both of which are current hogs.



*virtually indistinguishable from my much less expensive Price Of Tone , which seems to be the same thing (other than being only one channel), but machine-made by Analogman. Don't hesitate trying one of those out. Odd are good I'll pull the KoT out, put the PoT back in, and have room for the mass produced PC board equipped Fulldrive2 MOSFET that replaced my old handman FD2 from the mid90s.

Or maybe the FatRat will go back in. No one loves the FatRat but me, but it totally rules once you change the chip.

[tdbajus]

Also, Mojo's take on the WRHB absolutely rules in both humbucking and single coil modes. I need to wire it up and see how parallel sounds...

[Larry Mal]

This guy here?

https://truetone.com/cs12/

I meant to paste the link myself. That's it. I have two of them (you can use a y cable to increase current, so they work great for my Really Nice Levelling Amplifier and a few pedals I use in a drum machine setup!) an d they friggin' rule. I enjoy the Magical Fairy Dust that 18V provides, and it has two dedicated taps, plus plenty of space for a couple of y cables that double the voltage (not the same as the y cable that double current).

Interesting. Maybe I'll look into that myself. All I do is record but I could run my Iridium and Eden World Tour DI and such off of that.

I do have a Furman line conditioner, though, everything is on that already. But maybe in the future.

[tdbajus]

Interesting. Maybe I'll look into that myself. All I do is record but I could run my Iridium and Eden World Tour DI and such off of that.

I do have a Furman line conditioner, though, everything is on that already. But maybe in the future.

Q: if you have a bunch of wall warts plugged into a furman, you can still have problems with ground loops between the pedals, right? The furman just gets rid of ripple, right?

[Larry Mal]

I do not know the answer to that question- here's some information about it, but I haven't parsed it yet:

https://www.furmanpower.com/furman-tech ... nced-power

[Stratelejazzuar]

I used to own a EHX hum debugger that did a decent job with single coils. It had this sound that (to me) was sort of like a few milliseconds of delay. I'm not sure if it is part of how the circuit works, but as a fan of short delay, I didn't mind having something that reminded me of a 'half-doubling' effect.

I generally play single coils and am used to the hum, though. I got used to it as part of the deal with liking single coil sound.

[pj]

A volume pedal can work if you have single coils. Plus they are fun for finding your inner Bill Frisell or Terje Rypdal.