Anybody here ever user the EBtech Hum X

  • Thread starter Thread starter bwgintegra
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bwgintegra

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I moved into a new house last December and all the rooms have LED's with dimmers. I noticed my tube amps had more noise than my old house. I turned the light switch off and the hum goes away. Looking for a solution for my ground loop in the power. Anybody ever used the EBtech Hum X? Any other suggestions? Don't want to put anything in the signal chain of the guitar

Thanks
 
ebtech wont work for that.

only way to get rid of it is to ditch the dimmers
 
fuzzyguitars":3mbjn883 said:
ebtech wont work for that.

only way to get rid of it is to ditch the dimmers
Click to expand...

This^^^^. When I wired up my rehearsal spot I added a dimmer switch to the can lighting. Seemed like a good idea. It took me months to finally figure out that it was the dimmer switch. Not sure about the science of it but once that was switched out the PA, Bass and guitar rigs became quiet and no more buzz.
 
Yeah, the dimmer stuff isn´t a ground loop, which normally are a piece of cake to deal with, and there simply is no easy solution. Some excerpts from a nice guide I googled just now:

"Solid-state light dimmers can create havoc with audio gear. These devices work by changing the amount of time the full power line voltage is applied to the light being controlled, as opposed to actually raising and lowering the voltage. Although AC power is supplied by the power company as a pure sine wave (having no harmonics), the dimmer's sudden switching of the voltage on and off actually generates harmonics which extend to very high frequencies. And these high frequency harmonics can get into audio gear both by radiation through the air and also by traveling through the power wiring directly into the audio circuitry."

So if it comes through the air you can try to upgrade the shielding and hum rejection in your rig (high quality cables and connectors, balanced wiring, low impedance signals and so on) and hope for the best, but if it comes through the power line...

"The solution is to replace all of the solid-state dimmers in your house or studio building with variable power transformers. These devices let you vary the 60 Hz. voltage directly, without generating any harmonic energy. The downside is that variable power transformers are somewhat more expensive than solid-state dimmers. But if you are willing to do the wiring yourself, the cost for each dimmer installed will be between $60 and $130, depending on how many Watts of lighting are to be controlled."

"If you live in an apartment house you may not be able to eliminate dimmer buzz from other apartments. But if the buzz goes away completely when you turn off your own dimmed lights (turned off completely, not just dimmed all the way down), then replacing those dimmers with variable transformers will solve the problem."

http://ethanwiner.com/dimmers.html
 
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