EMI Shielding

[Tubetec]

Strats are about as bad as you can get for noise , all unscreened wires ,and very often they dont screen the back of the pick guard or compartments properly  . Its hard to measure the effectiveness of extra screening , because you'll never be able to recreate the same conditions  that  a customer has at a venue or their practise room etc .
Even with full sheilding some noise will still remain ,boost and distortion pedals typically make matters worse , still worth doing though .

 

[Newmarket]

Its a magnetic pickup, picking up a magnetic field! A conduit on the roof wont do f*** all!

Tubetec seems to have been positing that the electrical cables might be at least partially the problem so having them contained in a metal (steel) conduit as described might be of some benefit where that is the case.

 

[PRR]

You can reduce hum at destination OR source.

Conduit could be effective.

In this case it seems doubtful because it is his *neighbor's* feed wire. This would be a 3-way hassle between the guitarist, the neighbor, and the power company.

Also the feed cable is "long". It goes 10-100 feet to the neighbor and 1-10 miles to the power substation. Shielding just the 10 feet over the guitar may be a small reduction. It may take another 20 feet of conduit to get another small reduction. 40 feet conduit for the next small reduction. This quickly gets absurd.

I'm still curious. 240V wires run all over our lives and rarely throw big hum. Is the neighbor kilning pottery in the basement or growing dope under lights in the attic?

 

[Tubetec]

Id say incrementally chip away from both ends , better screen the guitar , do conduit if its at all possible ,but yeah you probably need to have a friendly chat with the neighbour first ,nowadays most smaller growers probably use Leds , it makes a huge saving on watts, but the driver circuitry could well be a potential source of noise .

Its an akward subject to broach if it turn out he is doing that , talk of involving the electric co, and he might cease operations very quickly ,but if your in a state where he can grow legally you probably  to have to come to some kind of agreement with him personally , Im not sure if involving the Electric .co as well is much use if he is the source .

Maybe if you got an idea of the frequency of the interference it might help pin point potential sources ,

https://lushledlighting.com/rfi-can-land-visit-police-growing-problem-hps/

 

[PRR]

> Im not sure if involving the Electric .co as well is much use if he is the source .

A wire passing over one property to another property is usually "owned" by the electric company.

(Strictly: the customer may have had to pay for some of it, but when the company puts juice in the wire, THEY have to be involved for any changes. Re-routing, conduit, etc.)

Another between-neighbors thing to try first: see if neighbor can turn-off ALL power for 15 minutes, and see if that cures the humm. If not, then the diagnosis is faulty.