Tube amp build (s)

[Simon Barden]

Ibanez what? Humbuckers or single coils?

[JohnH]

Ibanez what? Humbuckers or single coils?

Oh, should have said. Humbuckers - it's this exact guitar (an impulse buy last year while hanging out at DW with my brother)

It's a great guitar - love the shape of the neck, etc. I've never noticed a hum problem before, but then I also tend to run it through a bunch of pedals so that's not surprising

[Andy40]

What layout/schematic are you using? I spent ages reading through the 18 watt forum and got a bit overwhelmed lol. Ended up settling on the valvestorm layout for reasons I've since forgotten.

Good question John! Not sure yet. I was a bit bamboozled too and since my birthday isn't until December I have some time to muddle through which schematic I would use.

[Andy40]

Cabinet is coming along nicely too got the corners routed on the weekend.

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[McCreed]

Looking good Andy.

I should commission you to build a 1 x 12 cabinet for my Quilter Superblock US amp.

I could offer you free harmonica lessons for part payment!

[JohnH]

Looks great Andy! Now I'll be hanging out til December to watch your build, ha ha

[Simon Barden]

Oh, should have said. Humbuckers - it's this exact guitar (an impulse buy last year while hanging out at DW with my brother)

It's a great guitar - love the shape of the neck, etc. I've never noticed a hum problem before, but then I also tend to run it through a bunch of pedals so that's not surprising

Humbuckers, so shouldn’t be noisy except with a lot of gain. Black hardware, so I’d first check for a good ground to string connection. The bridge ground wire may have been pulled and now isn’t touching a scraped bit of the bridge.

Otherwise general ground and signal connection checking. I’d probably squirt some contact cleaner in the barrel jack (looks like it has one) and check that’s done up tight.

[JohnH]

Yeah, I assumed the bridge ground was loose, but checking it last night it seems fine.

I played around with it plugged into the amp again last night and the hum was gone. The only difference I can see between the Ibanez and the LP build is the LP has all shielded cavities, so I wonder if something was getting into the Ibanez but not into the LP (or perhaps an intermittent grounding issue with the Ibanez that wasn't immediately obvious when I looked last night).

The room I was playing in is definitely not electrically quiet - there's computers, wifi, all sorts. I turned everything off to chase the hum, but maybe one of those things was having it's own issues that day - who knows!

[Rabbitz]

Don't forget to look outside for noise sources...

Until a couple of days ago we lived across the road from some 133kV power lines and depending on the humidity, weather and length of time since it last rained on the insulators it would make my single coil ST-1 unplayable.

[JohnH]

Don't forget to look outside for noise sources...

Until a couple of days ago we lived across the road from some 133kV power lines and depending on the humidity, weather and length of time since it last rained on the insulators it would make my single coil ST-1 unplayable.

Good thinking! I'll keep an eye out if it happens again