Scientific progress goes "buzz"

[midwayfair]

So sometime on Sunday evening, I noticed a buzz while playing through the new amp.

I went absolutely nuts looking for it. I mean, I tried everything, including sticking my fingers into the back of the speaker cone, isolating unused pins in the tube sockets ...

My friend Keith came over yesterday early for game night and helped me out. Keith has an engineer's brain and was able scientifically eliminate every possible cause of the buzz until we had eliminated even the amp itself and just brought another amp into the practice room ...

At which point I discovered that it was the room (looks like I need some more stuff for dampening!) and not the amp.

I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, I feel like I wasted four hours of my life searching for a problem where it didn't exist. On the other, I think it's cool that systematic elimination of the causes led to us finding the real source of the noise, and I am immensely relieved that it wasn't something in the cabinet or speaker.

[jubal81]

Oh man, I've been through this exact thing - twice.

I was sure my tubes were microphonic. Turn it up a little and rattle rattle. Swapped, bought new ones. Only to finally realize that with the volume up a little, the drinking glasses in the cabinet were rattling. 

The other time, I was getting a weird tremolo effect - sometimes. Well after days of anguish, it turns out that 'sometimes' was when the ceiling fan was on...

[selfdestroyer]

Been there also with my Fender Bassman 135 head and 2X15" cab. Ended up being a frame for vinyl records. Its funny how sound can project of objects and give you a false feeling of where its coming from. Glad you tracked it down.

Cody

[Bufferz]

I'm very glad i read this, i'm sure this would have happened to me eventually....lol@ the ceiling fan tremelo

[GermanCdn]

In one of our rehearsal spaces (read: bass players parents basement), we had an issue with the odd resonant frequencies in some of the water pipes which only occurred after he bought a new Eden cab (something in the way it was eq'd and ported), made for a few odd practices until we figured out what it was through the same scientific method you employed.

Then again, most of our rehearsal spaces had something weird going on.  One had lousy grounding/dirty power, so their were a few mic kisses going on there, and practicing at my place didn't work because my dog would howl (in tune) everytime we hit a 2nd position B5 chord.

[davent]

Was playing my, at the time, newly minted 18watt and a click/pop i'd never noticed before was occuring every ~55sec. Chased around the basement shutting things down, first anything on the same circuit when there was no change broadened the kill until only thing on was the amp, no change. Moved upstairs to continue the shutdown and got it, pretty sure it was the burner under the pot of stock i was prepping, cycles on and off, every cycle/switch was throwing dirt back into the grid and causing the pop. In any case never had an issue since.

Light dimmer on the other side of the wall from my phono pre, (which is very particular to proximity to transformers and such) causes problems for the pre, annoying buzz.
dave

[wstimson]

I have nothing to add other than making sure you get proper credit for a solid Calvin and Hobbes reference. 

[davent]

Jon i keep meaning to ask if your music room has made life easier for you with regards to your cranky neighbour?
dave

[midwayfair]

Jon i keep meaning to ask if your music room has made life easier for you with regards to your cranky neighbour?
dave

I haven't gotten in trouble since, but I don't know if he also stopped complaining. Either way the situation hasn't escalated.

[wgc]

With any luck, things are buzzing in his house but he doesn't know why.