hearing a voice through my rig...

[dalkowski]

Hide the sharp things.

 

[JamesDeGrandis]

Build a grounded, copper-wire cage that's big enough to enclose you and the amp... get in, close the door...
Jam away...
If you still hear voices... I know a decent psychologist.

(Side note: Boss had a studio in the 1970's and 1980's... the main monitors had an issue one time where the left speaker was picking up 1480 AM...
but the right was picking up 1580 AM. Good times. )

 

[Lobster11]

The only time I ever had this problem was while playing through a small combo amp in the middle of the room with the power cord stretched out. When I moved the amp next to the power outlet and bunched up the cord the problem disappeared. Evidently it was the (stretched-out) power cord on the amp that was acting as a radio receiver.

 

[frankie5string]

Could someone have installed one of those power-line multimedia AV extenders in your immediate vicinity? Those things are a pain with some higher-gain amplification.

 

[Hounddog409]

yesterday i turned on my quilter interbass through my phil jones c2, plugged in my mini P (with fender precision pickups, totally shielded) and there was a deep buzzing, not like single coil hum, that got louder and quieter and included a man talking; when the buzzing got louder, the voice also got louder.

not being in the mood to trouble shoot, i plugged into my rumble 40 and had fun playing with no voice or other noise.

i've never had any talking on any bass, cable, amp in our place before - i always use the same electrical source, and every amp is in the exact same location facing the same way. i usually sit in the same chair facing the same direction, too.

i admit i'm not in the mood to trouble shoot every part of my rig, and it didn't happen later. i suspect one of the neighbors may have some cell phone accessory that "leaks".

Better than voices in your head?

That is weird. Picked a signal feom somewhere. Could you hear what he was saying? Like if it was "get out", not sure i would have powered up another amp.

 

[BrotherRay]

Your amp goes to 11, doesn't it?

 

[Gravedigger Dav]

yesterday i turned on my quilter interbass through my phil jones c2, plugged in my mini P (with fender precision pickups, totally shielded) and there was a deep buzzing, not like single coil hum, that got louder and quieter and included a man talking; when the buzzing got louder, the voice also got louder.

not being in the mood to trouble shoot, i plugged into my rumble 40 and had fun playing with no voice or other noise.

i've never had any talking on any bass, cable, amp in our place before - i always use the same electrical source, and every amp is in the exact same location facing the same way. i usually sit in the same chair facing the same direction, too.

i admit i'm not in the mood to trouble shoot every part of my rig, and it didn't happen later. i suspect one of the neighbors may have some cell phone accessory that "leaks".

It started with my grandmother like that a couple of months before they took her to the home.

 

[pcake]

Have you noticed a black suburban or van near the house lately?

shoulda thought to look!

It is odd that a couple people mention The Police, they have a song called "Does Everyone Stare" that had this happen during the recording, and they kept the voice in the final mix. About 30-35 seconds into the song a beautiful operatic voice came through the speakers while recording and they kept it. Here is a link, listen at around 30-35 seconds in. Great stuff!

wow, that's really cool! it sounds like it was meant to be part of the song.

Fluorescent light installed lately? Neighbor using ham radio? Cables from other rig crossing over? New antenna TV in near by room?

nothing new here, nothing crossing anything, TV is still on cable only. we're in a condo complex, and i don't see any large antennas.

While this could happen, it also could happen with any RF transmitter, operating at any power level and frequency combination, depending on distance and style/directionality of the antenna being used.

EVERY piece of conducting material in your rig, from the wires in your instrument down to the traces on the PC boards in your amp, are antennas. And, of course, they are all different lengths, shapes, and are all "pointed" in different directions. Manufacturers of electrionic devices (well, most reputable manufacturers, anyhow) shield and isolate their components from outside RF (and even internal RF) to make a reliable product, but there's only so much they can do... most devices will be vulnerable at certain frequencies, especially when power levels and antennas transmitting on those frequencies cause the electrical field strength to be high nearby. And the RF picture for any device changes with every physical move, as antenna phasing, shielding from external sources, and exposures to field strengths vary. The problem is, in the amplified music world, that it doesn't take much RF to create a problem, and the likelihood of this being a problem is VASTLY higher in our increasingly wireless world, and also increasingly difficult to track down.



While many hams transmit on SSB, most do not (probably due to cost of the equipment and the extra effort required lol). SSB would indeed most likely be unintelligible as received and demodulated by your bass rig (unless it happens to have a product detector and a finely tuned beat-frequency oscillator).

The fastest way to solve the problem while you don't have much time: switch out pieces of your rig until the problem disappears. Try different cables, guitars, pedals, amps, cabs, etc. Also try moving thing around. But while doing so keep in mind, depending on the power, distance, and/or directionality of the offending signal, you may not be able to solve the issue easily or quickly.

i switched the amp and that was that. same cord and bass, no pedals or effects.

Better than voices in your head?

That is weird. Picked a signal feom somewhere. Could you hear what he was saying? Like if it was "get out", not sure i would have powered up another amp.

LOL

i could hear what he was saying. my spanish isn't great, but he was having a normal conversation with someone i couldn't hear.

 

[Rip Van Dan]

yesterday i turned on my quilter interbass through my phil jones c2, plugged in my mini P (with fender precision pickups, totally shielded) and there was a deep buzzing, not like single coil hum, that got louder and quieter and included a man talking; when the buzzing got louder, the voice also got louder.

not being in the mood to trouble shoot, i plugged into my rumble 40 and had fun playing with no voice or other noise.

i've never had any talking on any bass, cable, amp in our place before - i always use the same electrical source, and every amp is in the exact same location facing the same way. i usually sit in the same chair facing the same direction, too.

i admit i'm not in the mood to trouble shoot every part of my rig, and it didn't happen later. i suspect one of the neighbors may have some cell phone accessory that "leaks".

That used to happen a lot more back in the 60's and 70's than it does now. I remember hearing the local Top-40 station playing through my Fender Bassman amp in 1966. Usually that is caused by the instrument cord acting as a big antenna, picking up and feeding RF signals into the input of the amp. Sometimes just moving your amp a foot away did the trick, or standing in a different spot. But more often than not getting a well-shielded instrument cord instead of the cheapest one you can find did the trick.

That's actually the main reason we used shielded cords for our instruments. The two-wire lamp cords would transmit the signal from you bass just fine but would also pick up all kinds of hum and some radio stations. If you mistakenly pick up a speaker cord and use that for your instrument cord, you will often get that type of interference because it's just a fancy 2-wire lamp cord with different ends. so make sure you are not using a speaker cord. I'd suggest that you try a few different instrument cords to see if that eliminates the problem. When you find one that fixes that problem, buy a spare one of the same brand, length and type.

Also, be aware that Radio Frequencies (RF signals) are fickle things and atmospheric conditions can drastically affect them. When I was a kid living in Santa Maria along the central coast of California, night time would drastically change what I could pickup and listen to on my little transistor radio. Although I couldn't hear it during the day, I could listen to KAFY in Bakersfield (was top 40 then, now Spanish Language station), KRLA in Los Angeles, and XERB, which had studios in LA but the transmitter was in Mexico. That was so they could transmit with 50,000-watts, which wasn't allowed in the US at the time. It's the station that had Wolfman Jack! During the day, the airwaves were too crowded and I couldn't get any of them. At night they would come and go.

So don't be surprised if this is an intermittent problem and don't go spending a lot of money trying to fix it before you try a number of different instrument cords while you're experiencing the problem.

 

[whatever4]

I had an old Traynor BLOC80B that picked up cell phone signals.

 

[byacey]

While many hams transmit on SSB, most do not (probably due to cost of the equipment and the extra effort required lol). SSB would indeed most likely be unintelligible as received and demodulated by your bass rig (unless it happens to have a product detector and a finely tuned beat-frequency oscillator).

You won't find too many hams operating AM. AM phone went out in the 1970s in favour of SSB, although there are a few nostalgics trying to revive phone operation that was so popular in the 1940s-1960s.

 

[byacey]

I had an old Traynor BLOC80B that picked up cell phone signals.

Cel phone digital chatter is common when in close proximity to many guitar amps.

 

[Shorelinegold]

yesterday i turned on my quilter interbass through my phil jones c2, plugged in my mini P (with fender precision pickups, totally shielded) and there was a deep buzzing, not like single coil hum, that got louder and quieter and included a man talking; when the buzzing got louder, the voice also got louder.

The ghost of James Jamerson asking you why you're playing a mini P and not full size. Pfft.

 

[Acoustic356]

This is full of bad information.

The “same electrical circuit” thing is just a myth, stage power on most large stages and tours consist of multiple circuits on different (3) phases.

All guitar cables are shielded.

Balanced signal conversion is only valuable when the devices (pedals, amps) operate in balanced mode (99.9% do not).

Sometimes, though IME rarely do power conditioners help and they can also make things worse.

That's fair... I'm just the messenger. We learn through the conversation.

 

[2112]

You won't find too many hams operating AM. AM phone went out in the 1970s in favour of SSB, although there are a few nostalgics trying to revive phone operation that was so popular in the 1940s-1960s.

Quite true. Today, most hams are appliance operators on FM phone. Including me.

 

[esoxhntr]

 

[crazyBassClown]

i admit i'm not in the mood to trouble shoot every part of my rig, and it didn't happen later. i suspect one of the neighbors may have some cell phone accessory that "leaks".

Most of that stuff these days is digital so you won't get any understandable audio from the interference, but older stuff is analogue and you might.
A few weeks back I had the same thing at a gig, except it wasn't coming out my bass amp just through the pa, and quite loudly. Apparently on my basses DI channel because the soundguy was freaking out.

The “same electrical circuit” thing is just a myth, stage power on most large stages and tours consist of multiple circuits on different (3) phases.

I assume this is about having everything on the same earth and is just the easiest way to achieve/explain that in typical situations for people not carrying 3 phase power cabling and the associated knowledge.
I'd argue if it's all running off a single 3 phase connection then it's still all "the same electrical circuit" in this sense anyway.

 

[dbase]

Thank God... someone else hears it .. I thought I was going crazy.

 

[dalkowski]

(Side note: Boss had a studio in the 1970's and 1980's... the main monitors had an issue one time where the left speaker was picking up 1480 AM...
but the right was picking up 1580 AM. Good times. )

In other words, traffic and weather in stereo.

 

[Wasnex]

yesterday i turned on my quilter interbass through my phil jones c2, plugged in my mini P (with fender precision pickups, totally shielded) and there was a deep buzzing, not like single coil hum, that got louder and quieter and included a man talking; when the buzzing got louder, the voice also got louder.

not being in the mood to trouble shoot, i plugged into my rumble 40 and had fun playing with no voice or other noise.

i've never had any talking on any bass, cable, amp in our place before - i always use the same electrical source, and every amp is in the exact same location facing the same way. i usually sit in the same chair facing the same direction, too.

i admit i'm not in the mood to trouble shoot every part of my rig, and it didn't happen later. i suspect one of the neighbors may have some cell phone accessory that "leaks".

I guess I can empathize, but probably not really help:

I had this sort of problem with my DB359. I was having the problem regardless of whether I had a bass plugged in or not. If I lifted the ground on the AC, the hum and radio reception stopped. However, it's not safe to do this, so this is not a solution.

Removing the top cover of the amp actually seemed to reduce the problem, but not totally eliminate it. I found this surprising as I believe the top is supposed to shield the circuits from EMF. I believe the signal is coming in on my houses AC system, but something about the amp was detecting the signal so I could hear the radio broadcast. Even loosening the screws that hold the top panel in placed seemed to have a bit of an impact. My guess is there are microcurrents going through the chassis and the tension of the screws was steering these currents.

It seemed like the signal was being picked up by V1 as varying the gain control changed the level of the hum and radio broadcast. Also holding my hand close to the tone control circuits on the front panel seemed to have an impact.

Eventually I rolled a bunch of tubes in the amp, and it did not seem to help. Actually I initially thought a certain tube combination helped, but the next day the hum and radio were back bad as ever. The noise tended to fade in and out, which made troubleshooting even more of a challenge.

The last thing I did is go nuts on a balance adjustment on the phase inverter tube. I had tried this previously but only made gentle changes. This time I explored the full range of the control. The final adjustment was significantly different. I made this change in a different room where the amp was not picking up the radio signal. But after the adjustment I put the amp back in its previously location, and (knock on wood) I haven't heard it pick up radio since. So my guess is the phase inverter was so far out of balance that it was detecting the radio signal. The noise floor is also improved a bit...not perfect but definitely better.

My understanding is it is very easy to detect AM radio. Something as basic as a corroded connection can do it.

Sometimes I also pick up radio when I use certain amps with certain pedal combinations. Same room but different plug.

Good luck fixing the problem.