Posted on 12/22/2018 8:40:19 AM PST by kjam22
So, with all of the bad and or scary news these days.... and in light of the fact the Deep State is still fighting back... I thought a nice little thread about fixing the Hiss that is often inherent in a Gibson Les Paul might be a nice change of pace.
I bought a new Gibson Les Paul (2017) Standard, and I have loved it. It plays GREAT. It sounds good, it is dead quiet, it looks good. I have owned older Les Pauls over the years, and I own two American made Strats. I love this new Les Paul as much as any of them.
I have been playing this Les Paul in a church setting using a wireless rig - Xvive U2. This is a great little wireless that does not interfere with the various wireless mics, lighting etc that goes on every Sunday morning. Well, a couple of weeks back while I was strapping on a choir member bumped into me and I dropped the Les Paul. It landed right on the input jack, with the wireless transmitter in it. Shattered the plastic transmitter and broke the input jack in the guitar.
I took the broken Les Paul to a local guy who is authorized repair for Gibson, Fender, and Martin. Interesting guy who has been in business in same place for 41 years. Looks and speaks like he could be playing for the Greatful Dead. But long story short he fixed the input jack for 17 bucks. Got it home and plugged in amp at home and I had Hiss. This guitar had never had hiss. It was always dead quiet. Changed chords, changed rooms etc etc. Hiss that quit when I touched the strings etc. I would say it was a little less than the normal amount people often complain about. But it hadn't been there before. After a while it dawned on me that I had never run this guitar with a cable. Just always used the wireless. So I replaced the wireless rig (day before yesterday) with the exact same unit and the guitar is dead quiet again. Kind of makes sense in that the wireless eliminates chord from amp which is plugged into house electric etc.
So long story short.... I am convinced that guitar hiss, buzz, whatever that sounds like a grounding issue can be fixed with a wireless rig. Just a nice thought for the day and hopefully a distraction from the real world junk....
It could be the wireless rig has a built-in noise gate and when you play the sound of the guitar drowns out the hum/hiss/noise and when you don’t play it is dead quiet.
My Les Paul Studio Robot had some real hissy issues, and then the battery wouldn’t recharge so the “robot” part of it was useless. I was told that Gibson would send a brand new non-robot guitar as a replacement, because, evidently a lot of people had the same problem. The Robot was The Edsel of Gibson!
But I LOVED the guitar itself, so I had my trusted luthier strip all the robot guts out of it, replace the tuning heads to Grovers, and now I have an AWESOME Les Paul that I won’t part with.
AND. No hiss.
AND...I always use a regular cord when I play my chords.
Merry Christmas!
Is there a guitar ping list somewhere? I would love to be on it.
lol
There is if you make one (hint, hint).
I have a Gibson SG bass guitar that I refurbished a few years back. It wound up with a distracting hum after I reassembled it. Drove me nuts. The wiring all looked intact as well. In the end, I redid ALL the solder joints and the hum disappeared. Sometimes, you just never know.
But, if your wireless rig does the trick, problem solved.
I’m Probably the one who has been predestined to do exactly that!
LOL.
Touche!
Since the Idea is Irresistable, I will Persevere and announce that anyone wanting to be on the Guitar Ping List which I will maintain by FReepmailing me.
Of course the list may end up being Limited by my ability to keep up with it, but being on the list will Unconditional, no matter what brand you play.
We’ll try to keep the posts clean so as not to descend into Total Depravity, but since we are all adults, there will be no need to tiptoe through the Tulips either.
A sound conditioner helps keep those pesky electric noises within tolerable limits.
The funniest audio gremlin I ever had was once we were playing a gig and in-between songs an amp that was mic’d into the PA picked up a radio broadcast signal.
Pesky electric grid sound gremlin guitar ping. brewer1516 added to the ping list.
If anyone needs the guitar ping list it’s at the bottom of my profile page. You’ll need to page down two or three times to find it as it appears that I’ve been banned or suspended.
In that case, lest we descend into musical Pelagianism, Let me be the first to exercise my Non-existent Libertarian Free Will, and request that i be added to the ping list. FReepmail will follow.
Ping to Post 52. A useful “#MeToo”, unlike that other one.
Go ahead and add me as well as left that other site to the list.
All due respect, but from my bench it would hiss on wireless, too.
Cables, grounds, caps & shielding:
Rules of the roadie.
- Tales from a diagnostics expert & self-educated engineer.
Agree hiss isn’t a grounding or shielding issue. Hiss is random noise from active electronics (like you said earlier) and can’t be shielded or grounded away. The thing is, the original poster said the hiss gets quieter when he touches the strings. That doesn’t happen with hiss but it’s very common with hum. So I think he’s saying hiss but actually means hum (60/120 Hz AC ripple).
As for why a wireless system would clean up a hum issue, two possibilities come to mind. One is that it’s isolating the guitar from the amp so that it’s not sharing the amp’s ground, although I can’t think of a good reason why this would help. Or the wireless system has a built in noise gate that mutes the output during pauses, which would be my guess.
Wish I could help, but this doesn’t apply to me since I play a Tele. ;)
I am seriously jealous of everyone’s lists of the guitars they have! I want a PRS, a Taylor, a Strat, etc....dangit. You can’t play all of them at once, tho! Rock on and Merry Christmas everyone!
Aha! I see that there is already a Guitar and Bass Ping List....and MY Name is already written in the Book.
Since it wouldn’t be good to have TWO lists existing in Hypostasis, I will relinquish my attempt to start one.
We need to be Systematic about this, so as not to confuse the Institute of FR.
I lean towards the noise gate theory. On the other hand I don’t see any mention of a noise gate in the product description for his system at the music gear sites. But I’m not sure they would list it as a feature even if it had it.
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