insane guitar noise problem

[turing]

slightly OT i know, but if anyone could help me identify the possible sources of some hellish interference on guitar signals i'd wash their feet with my tears.
ok, with any sort of guitar, i get a cycling tick, almost as loud as the guitar signal. that's di-ed, plugged into amps, straight into the desk, whichever. no mobile phones around, balanced and unbalanced cable, with and without di boxes, no digital devices within 2o metres.
it's driving me mad. how can a guitar, plugged straight into an amp, make this insane, digital-y noise?  like a high speed clock.
oh yes, and the other thing is, some days it's not there! i've tried every variable i can think of, but it seems to happen entirely randomly.
as you might discern from the tone of this message, my brain has been taxed severely, and i hope someone can shed some light....................

[Peter Snowberg]

It sounds like you may be near a radio transmitter. 

If you move the guitar ansd amp to another location do you have the same problem?

[tiges_ tendres]

My old favourite guitar shop used to pick up this terrible click noise, similar to what you describe.  It turns out that the mains power was being corrupted someway by the shopping center alarm system.

As you walked past the alarm interface on the stairs, you could hear it making the same noises that was coming out of the amp.  Bad for business!

[TELEFUNKON]

freezer/washing machine or similar (ground/earth issue);

R.G.?

[Paul Marossy]

Do you wear a wristwatch? If so, what happens if you remove it while playing?

[343 Salty Beans]

Do you wear a wristwatch? If so, what happens if you remove it while playing?

Get out...a wristwatch can cause noise???

[MartyMart]

I have a couple of old "hardware samplers" like an EMU E6400
When they are "loading from disk" the digital SCSI junk noise, comes from the outputs !
I recorded it once for fun, used it in a middle 8 somewhere .........!!

It sounds like your "ring main" that your gear is connected to, may be the same as your
fridge/freezer, that's not good.
My studio room, has it's own "ring" and is isolated from "pops and clicks" in the rest of the house.

Perhaps a nice 100 buck "Mains filter" block would help, you'll get a 8 way block for that much.

MM

[turing]

thanks for all the suggestions guys. i'll go through and see if we can narrow it down..............no wristwatch, all the mains is filtered through power blocks, and i'm in a seperate building away from the house.
i do have an internet wireless connection, and an alarm system, but the problem pre-dates them being installed. my control room is upstairs, the live room below, and some keyboards, and some guitars, have problems in both rooms. this is the trouble really, i can't discern a pattern as to why it might be happening. the only thing that's a constant is that telecasters are particularly bad. put your hand near the pickup and they go crazy. that seems to me like a grounding thing, but how the hell do i fix it?
thanks for all the help guys

[TELEFUNKON]

freezer/washing machine or similar (ground/earth issue);

R.G.?

reminds me slightly of this one:
http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=41861.0

[turing]

that sounds a bit different from me...........it's not a power-esque hum, rather a very definite hashing tick cycle. sounds digital-y, but there's no device nearby that i could think would be causing it.

[Paul Marossy]

Get out...a wristwatch can cause noise???

Yeah, it sounds whacky, but I have had guitar pickups pickup the ticking from my wrist watch before. It was a shot in the dark, I know, but I thought I'd suggest it. 

[Mark Hammer]

Sit on your couch with your guitar on your lap and use your TV remote.  It picks that up too.  Not from great distances, but use within a foot or so of the pickups is audible.  Easy to imagine a digital watch with a quartz crystal that does something similar, though unless it was on your picking hand, you wouldn't expect to pick it up until you started moving up to the high frets.

[TELEFUNKON]

what type of illumination do you have?
(energy saving bulbs? "neon"?)

[turing]

lighting is standard dichroic bulbs, on a non-dimmer circuit, and some rather cool rgb leds. i wanted 3 phase power, but sadly we had to settle for having the points filtered.

[MartyMart]

Hmm, just noticed a "similar" problem, kind of like a "schh schh click ...... schh schh click"
in a permanent 2 second cycle !!
It only occurs when using my JMP-1, which is in the same rack as my EMU sampler !
DA DA  !!

That's "hard disk access" being picked up through earth and the rack.
Remove said JMP-1 from rack, and place it on top, on a piece of studio foam
and it's gone  ... 

It was fairly quiet, had to have some serious TS-9 gain pumping through and monitors
very loud to hear it ... so hadn't noticed before ( usually playing along to a drum/bass track )

Could be something similar at your end .... !!

Peace,

Marty.

[turing]

interesting. i wonder if i've got anything in the rack that might be doing it. pc, midi i/o, and then a load of preamps and comps. nothing else digi though. maybe i'll try and record some of it. how do i attach sound files to msgs?

[TELEFUNKON]

no digital devices within 2o metres.

?

pc, midi i/o, and then a load of preamps and comps. nothing else digi though

?

hah - and you have others searching. 

[turing]

eh? you mean, i've got so much stuff it would be a fruitless search? or given how much stuff i have i should be able to find it myself?
anyway, recording session finishes soon, so i'll try and post a sound clip.

[puretube]

switch off each device, one by one, until only the amp/guitar is left (in the dark);
then you`ll know whether the amp/guitar got a problem,
or the other stuff should undergo an EMI test...