Noise goes away when I go wireless.

[ophyong]

I just want to know what possible reasons exist for a noise that never goes away with cables, to disappear completely with wireless.

 

[FullumMusic]

Because with cables your instrument is connected to the power circuit coming from the wall that powers the amp, etc. With the wireless unit, the instrument is an electrical island. The power from the wall only makes it as far as the wireless receiver unit.

The easiest example for this is 60Hz Hum. That's the frequency of the power coming from the wall. If your bass isn't physically connected to the amp (which is plugged into the wall), it's not connected to the circuitry that has the 60Hz electricity. It's connected to the transmitter pack which is running on DC battery power. DC has no frequency so no hum. (in the US the electricity runs at 60Hz. Other countries might have different electrical specs.)

 

[ophyong]

Thank you.

I don't know much about electricity but everything you have said is what I'd hoped for when I last tried this bass earlier this year. After trying many things to no avail, I tried wireless in hope, but the noise was still present, which really confused me. I gave up after that.

A little later though, we sent the bass to get wired in passive mode and it came back with slightly different symptoms: the noise was present using cables, but absent using wireless. Which is what I hoped for earlier.

So would you say that your explanation above should also apply to active basses?

By the way, there is one other vairable, the power supply in the building. Something in it may have changed slightly during that time.

 

[FullumMusic]

Thank you.

I don't know much about electricity but everything you have said is what I'd hoped for when I last tried this bass earlier this year. After trying many things to no avail, I tried wireless in hope, but the noise was still present, which really confused me. I gave up after that.

A little later though, we sent the bass to get wired in passive mode and it came back with slightly different symptoms: the noise was present using cables, but absent using wireless. Which is what I hoped for earlier.

So would you say that your explanation above should also apply to active basses?

By the way, there is one other vairable, the power supply in the building. Something in it may have changed slightly during that time.

Welcome... and yep, Active or Passive basses will behave the same way if the noise is caused by being connected to the electricity.

Also yeah, the building's power is definitely a variable. It's not just the one outlet you're plugged into. It's anything else that's connected to the same circuit as your outlet. For example, if the Lighting Tech plugs their lighting rig into the same circuit as the PA, the PA will be noisy. So maybe you plug in and it's fine one day, but another day, somewhere else on the same circuit someone turned on a light with a dimmer, or ran some other appliance, or plugged in their poorly grounded amp, or who knows, but it's on the same circuit and now your normally-quiet bass & amp get noisy.

However, if the source of the noise is something on the bass itself, irrespective of being connected to the amp/power circuit, the bass will generate the noise and then put that noise into the wireless transmitter and send it to the amp.

My guess is when the bass is noisy even when connected to wireless, it's either a bad connection in the circuit somewhere (bad solder point; loose cable; pinched cable; etc), or more likely a shielding issue. Pickups are just magnets with wire wrapped around them. When you move magnetic material (strings) back and forth through the magnetic field of a magnet wrapped in a coil of wire, you create AC electrical current. However, a magnet with wires wrapped around it will also act as a radio antenna and pick up random radio waves from the air. Proper shielding "shields" the pickup and the rest of the circuitry on the bass from whatever radio noise is floating around the air around you (and there's always tons of radio noise, both natural and human-made).

I have to add... it's been a really really long time since i took electronics classes, so my explanations could be slightly off, or the right idea but not perfectly accurate. In that case, i'm sure there are a lot of other people here who know electronics way better than i do who can correct me.

 

[Blues Daddy]

FYI . . .

My passive basses all work fine with my wireless unit, but two of my three active basses (all three have 9 volt batteries) have obvious noise issues when trying to use the wireless transmitter plugged directly into the bass. My workaround solution for these two basses is to move the transmitter up onto the guitar strap and use a 12 inch instrument cable between the wireless and the bass.

 

[ophyong]

Welcome... and yep, Active or Passive basses will behave the same way if the noise is caused by being connected to the electricity.

Also yeah, the building's power is definitely a variable. It's not just the one outlet you're plugged into. It's anything else that's connected to the same circuit as your outlet. For example, if the Lighting Tech plugs their lighting rig into the same circuit as the PA, the PA will be noisy. So maybe you plug in and it's fine one day, but another day, somewhere else on the same circuit someone turned on a light with a dimmer, or ran some other appliance, or plugged in their poorly grounded amp, or who knows, but it's on the same circuit and now your normally-quiet bass & amp get noisy.

However, if the source of the noise is something on the bass itself, irrespective of being connected to the amp/power circuit, the bass will generate the noise and then put that noise into the wireless transmitter and send it to the amp.

My guess is when the bass is noisy even when connected to wireless, it's either a bad connection in the circuit somewhere (bad solder point; loose cable; pinched cable; etc), or more likely a shielding issue. Pickups are just magnets with wire wrapped around them. When you move magnetic material (strings) back and forth through the magnetic field of a magnet wrapped in a coil of wire, you create AC electrical current. However, a magnet with wires wrapped around it will also act as a radio antenna and pick up random radio waves from the air. Proper shielding "shields" the pickup and the rest of the circuitry on the bass from whatever radio noise is floating around the air around you (and there's always tons of radio noise, both natural and human-made).

I have to add... it's been a really really long time since i took electronics classes, so my explanations could be slightly off, or the right idea but not perfectly accurate. In that case, i'm sure there are a lot of other people here who know electronics way better than i do who can correct me.

Your explanation makes sense to me and the shielding part sounds similar to other opinions I've read. Thanks.

I have a few more scenarios to try. I'm taking another bass to the place tomorrow. I'll see how that goes.

 

[ophyong]

FYI . . .

My passive basses all work fine with my wireless unit, but two of my three active basses (all three have 9 volt batteries) have obvious noise issues when trying to use the wireless transmitter plugged directly into the bass. My workaround solution for these two basses is to move the transmitter up onto the guitar strap and use a 12 inch instrument cable between the wireless and the bass.

Interesting. I'm taking another passive bass to the place tomorrow.