Coping with guitar-related noise

[mnordbye]

So I'm designing some new pedals at the moment, and I'm working on lowering noise at the moment. The main headache is lowering the static noise which happens when your body touches the strings, bridge etc.

Does anyone have any good tips for reducing this static noise?

Magnus

[amptramp]

You may have to take a ground wire to the bridge.  The strings should be naturally shorted together at the nut and the bridge.  If the strings, bridge and nut are floating, they can induce electrostatic noise into the pickup.  Since your fingers contact the strings, this should be a safety ground and should be at or near the same potential as the rest of the grounds.  The ground should go back to a single safety ground through the cables to the amplifier.

[mnordbye]

Thanks for the answer, but i'm afraid my question was misunderstood! What i mean was what you can do, circuit wise, in a pedal to remove or lowering this static noise.

Magnus

[ashcat_lt]

There is no satisfactory way to remove the noise coming from a guitar once it gets to your pedal.

Sure, you could try to gate it out, but you risk losing some of your sustain and possibly some attack.  You could try to filter it out, but you will probably end up messing up your guitar sound on the process.

The best you can hope for at the pedal is to not add much more noise or to unnecessarily amplify the noise that's coming in.

You must adress the noise issue at your guitar.  If the noise gets louder when you touch the strings then there's a problem with the string/bridge ground and you should fix it.  While you're at it, shield all of the cavities.

[sault]

There is no satisfactory way to remove the noise coming from a guitar once it gets to your pedal.

+1. I hate gating/noise removal pedals... with the exception of a rapid gate to help emphasize chunk-a-chugga rhythm palm-muting, I don't feel like there is a place in normal guitar playing for gates and the like.

The following link is one of the best I've seen regarding how to reduce noise, hum, and interference in your guitar. It doesn't take much to alter the information from a Strat to a Les Paul-style, if that's what you've got, too.

http://www.guitarnuts.com/wiring/shielding/shield3.php

The best you can do is address the noise generated by the pedal - make sure your power supply is filtered and regulated, pay attention to your layout, ground correctly, and in terms of using it, don't use more gain than necessary! You might be surprised what a mild to moderate mid boost (as little as +3 db from 800-1khz) in front of your distortion pedal will do in terms of saturation...

That part about gain is probably the most important, especially for metal/rock/punk guitarists. Too much gain destroys dynamics, reduces note clarity, and adds noise, noise, noise...

All of the above points can be addressed by having active pickups or onboard electronics, too. I love having an onboard buffer preamp in my guitar... doesn't add gain, but it preserves tone and eliminates tone sucking from cheap cables. That part's really nice - I hate paying for really expensive cables!

[Processaurus]

I don't understand, you complain about your guitar being noisy but you don't want to fix your guitar?  Stopping the noise at the source is the only good way to get rid of it, audio reconstruction is always going to sound inferior.