high pitched squeal and the woes of japanese housing!

[theix]

Wondering if anyone can help me with this....

I'm living in a pretty small apartment in Tokyo. I have 2 basses (fender Jazz and a Epi EB3) which I run into a presonus firebox connected to my macbook and then alesis m1 actives for monitors running out of the firebox.

I've been trying to find the cause of this high pitched squeal I get which only occurs when using my basses. The squeal of course is worse with the jazz due to the single coils.

I've done lots of troubleshooting. i thought it might be the firebox but I plugged my bass into one of my alesis m1s and the prob still occurs. I also though it might be the alesis but I get the squeal even with headphones out of the firebox. Also I've tried different mains in the apartment, different rooms, setups and chains, unplugging all other electrical stuff I could think of but still it happens.

The squeal is intermittent, comes and goes every couple of minutes and by using a spectrum analyzer I've found its freq is around 6472Hz.

Now, as I said I'm living in a small place in central Tokyo surrounded by god knows how much interferance so I realise this is the problem but does anyone know of anything I could do to stop or reduce this noise aside from moving or buliding an underground bunker!

[joeyl]

cool, I would like to live in Tokyo for a little while because I am a big fan of the culture (otaku )

I would say the squeal is due to a bad wiring in the building mains. My house has the same problem, they have a fluorescent tube in the bathroom wired on the same circuit as the outlet that I plug my amp in, when you turn on the tube, I get nothing but squealing and buzzing. Loud enough to cover the sound of the bass. I assume the outlets are the grounded type?


some people have reported some success with power line conditioners or something like this

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/produ...tor?sku=150452

[theix]

Thanks for the tip Joeyl. I'll have a look for something like that.

The apartment block was made 30 yrs ago which by Japan's standards is getting on a bit! I'm in Shibuya though surrounded by lots of other buildings so I'm afraid I might just have to put up with it until I move to a more modern place. Guess I could try shielding the Fender Jazz but don't really fancy doing the soldering.

Anyway, if you're an ''otaku'' you should def some here. You might not leave though! I've been here 8 yrs now.

[joeyl]

Originally Posted by theix

Thanks for the tip Joeyl. I'll have a look for something like that.

The apartment block was made 30 yrs ago which by Japan's standards is getting on a bit! I'm in Shibuya though surrounded by lots of other buildings so I'm afraid I might just have to put up with it until I move to a more modern place. Guess I could try shielding the Fender Jazz but don't really fancy doing the soldering.

Anyway, if you're an ''otaku'' you should def some here. You might not leave though! I've been here 8 yrs now.

well shielding will help but maybe not that much if you still get a lot of hum/squeal with both pickups on the Jazz turned up the same amount. And I believe the Epi has humbuckers also right?so you are not dealing with only RF buzz here. However soldering is not hard and you might as well do it as a side project

Have you tested the outlets for a solid ground? Bad grounds will cause all sorts of problems, and bad outlets can be fatal if the shortest path to ground is your body.

I love everything from Japan (cars such as the Skyline GT-R, which we are getting soon stateside but too expensive for me 75K!!!) mangas, and animes of course. And their technology is so far ahead, such as cell phones as credit card for the vending machines, that is cool. Here in the US, our vending machines are still running on crisp dollar bills only! And broadband is really broadband in Japan.
I only disagree with their fishing practices though