My practice setup is a Fender Rumble 100. It’s a great combo amp, nice sound. And it has quite the punch for a 22 lb combo. When I play my Fender Player Series Mustang PJ bass, there is constant hum out of amp, unless I have my fingers on the strings. When I play my Sterling Stingray 5HH, there is no hum. I know it is probably something simple, so don’t judge me too harshly.
UPDATE - Turned the Gain way down on the Rumble and it is much better. I am in a small old bedroom in my house for a practice room, and I have limited space. I use, for practice, shall I say, cheap D’Addario cables (10 ft). If I move a couple of feet farther from the amp, the hum goes away. It could be the cable being coiled up on the floor. I am going to ask my trusted luthier at the local store about shielding on that Fender Mustang. My Stingray 5HH doesn’t have the issue.
I’ll try to remember to attach a youtube vid which may fix this when I get home,
In short modifying a patch cable with resistors into a sort of noise gate using the effects loop.
I will build a a couple of these to test on mate’s noisy amps-if they have an effects loop.
FWIW I have a Rumble 100 with no hum, but we have pretty good grounding in Australia
When you touch the strings you’re completing the ground path (strings → bridge → ground wire → electronics → amp). If the bass or cable shielding isn’t perfect, you become the missing link and the hum drops.
One thing to consider is eliminating the source of the EFI interference. Shielding is of limited benefit as the front of the pickups are still exposed. Also make sure to properly ground the shielding too or it won’t do much of anything.
But shielding definitely doesn’t hurt. I greatly prefer the paint to the tape but YMMV.
Yes, this has been my experience. I get no buzz at all from my Ibanez EHB when playing at home, but in my mini chalet in Chamonix in the winter I get terrible hum when I’m not in contact with the strings (great muting discipline!). So I’ve always assumed it is just a noisy environment. Being a small single room chalet there’s a lot of noisy stuff in a small space: wifi, my computer and monitor, kitchen stuff etc. all packed into 4m x 4m.
I had not thought about the other electrical interference. There are two desktop computers (pc and mac) and HD tv, wireless printer, cable modem and wireless router, all in the smallest room in my house. Turning the Gain way down on that Rumble 100 has certainly helped. It makes my Stringray sound better too.
