There is something that concerns everyone who starts playing electric guitar regulary at home or not in a professional environment. I am talking about those undesired nosies you can hear while not struming or picking your guitar. Some people call it humming, hissing, buzzing and if you google it you might find terms as 60 hz loop noise, and so on. we all know the noise, and having read and investigated this problem I found that the main cause for this noise is the EMI or electro magnetic interference. how do you know the sound is not coming from your amp? just turn all the way down your guitar volume know and if there is no noise you are being affected by EMI. the sources are usually the wifi routers, light dimmers, computer screens, fans, mobile phones, wireless devices, and any source emitting radio or magnetic signals. as we usually play in bedrooms or small home studios we are usually surrounded by one or more of the aforementioned devices. the ones making more problems are computers (desktops) with huge screens and/or cooling fans of low quality or set for high performance (gaming or heavy use)
We usually have electric guitars with single coil pick ups, we can go over explaining the specs of these pick ups, for that matter you can do your own research, but if you are just starting you might find yourself ovewhelmed by this problem and might think that your cables are faulty and even worse that your guitar is just broken or bad.
solutions:
1. Turn off all wireless devices nearby your area of practice.
2. Use laptops, they are less likely to cause problems.
3. Move around with your guitar, try to find a spot in the room that has less EMI
4. Don’t leave mobile phones or ipads chargers plugged while not being used.
5. Avoid light dimmers, use simple light switches.
6. Large fluorecent lights are a big source of EMI.
7. Don’t play too close to a TV set, radio or computer.
8. Don’t play too close to a fan or air conditioning system.
9. If you are using a modeling amp, it might be a source of EMI. Play not to close to it.
10. In short try to avoid any electrical device that uses magnetism or electricity nearby yor practice, o music studio.
There is another kind of noises you can get while playing guitar, and I will try to talk about it in ther posts.
as a reference please watch this video I found on youtube:
JM Cunningham 