humm, anyone tried this

[Ansil]

as i was posting this earlier i was wondering if anyone has ever tried this, my friend thought it was crazy till he heard it, and i have to admit i didn't notice any hum with humbuckers so i never tried it to see if it made a difference.  but with single coils it was amazing.

i used a 555 oscilator, set around 60hz through a phase inversion circuit. and blended this with my guitar input,  before the preamp, but after the pedals.

the music store i worked at had alot of these annoying signs and all of them were neon.  serious havoc with the customers and my guitar lessons.  

but this really seemed to help.  by setting the gate input to only play when i did, (well it wasn't as easy as i am just typing it out, it was a headache making the gated section).  it seemed to mask out the overtones also,  maybe i am crazy but i wanted to know what people here thought.

[Quackzed]

60 cycle hum cancellation??!!? thats @#$% brilliant! patent it! seriously!

what about an  unshielded  line in paralell with fx then an inverted amplifying stage to amplify the out of phase noise, you could call it the humbucking box...   sorryfor the tangent...

it's not how line conditioners work...so it may just be all yours... bloody brilliant!!!

[R.G.]

See:
http://www.ethanwiner.com/filters.html

I've built a few of these, and they work.

Hum cancellation is an old way to get rid of hum. The old hum pots in older tube amps allow you to intentionally unbalance the heaters to inject a (hopefully) cancelling hum. Winer's multiharmonic version works better. I modified the shift stages and switching to simplify it, but the concept is the same.

[LP Hovercraft]

Would that filter circuit optimally be used first in the effects line?  Single coil tone can be gorgeous when all the band is playing but not so cool in-between songs.  Great stuff here.

[R.G.]

That filter circuit has a few limitations, and that in fact is why you don't already see it as a commercial product.

If you think about it, a hum canceller only works if you don't change the hum it's cancelling. If, for instance, you magically kill all of the hum it's cancelling, then it keeps injecting its equal-but-reversed hum and you can then listen to that.

So it only cancels for the one spot in the chain where it sits.

If you put it on the amp, it effectively cancells the guitar, effects, cabling, etc. hum as well as the amps hum.

Now what happens when you step on a footswitch and change the gain of the hum coming through the effects chain? Or change the hum through selecting effects in a different path? Or flip from guitar or amp to another with an ABY?

Still, imperfect as it is, it's useful in some conditions. But it's not a panacea. It's too highly dependent on the specific conditions it's cancelling.