Metal Church Mondays

[blumuz123]

All Right guys....and gals, if any. Question

The kids at church, on their own, started Metal Church Mondays (a Metal jam session after school on mondays).
Heres the deal we have a mod 50- T/D - Sl w/GC eggie slant 4x12 on one side
and a seminar head w/Gc eggie 4X12 straight on the other.
they use their little crates and peavy's at home with the buzz (metal) button on

They bring in strats, epiphone les paul, mostly low end guitars etc with what looks like Low-medium gain pickups.
We do have a BB pedal and some sort of dan electro metal pedal -

however, we are getting alot of squealing, buzz and noise out of the guitars/Egnater amps.

unless wrong I believe the culpret is the guitar pickups, am I Correct?

what is the best, least expensive way to remedy this. Should we get a couple of esp LTD guitars w/emgs in them?
Switch guitars with Motorcity Pu's, Ibanez, jackson are these noisless

Do we need like a decimater pedal for the noise???

and/or a couple of pedals, ie pandoras box or other????
Just tryin to get the shredding tone and lose the noise



I am not a metal guy but willing to learn to give the kids some direction
obviously EG5 is in the future.

big thanks

 

[Godfail]

Anyone else expect to hear this week's cover of Watch The Children Pray?

 

[Audioholic]

way way back in the day, I tried an epiphone les paul, and that sucker fed back and squeeled like crazy. Not sure if that is the issue, but with lots of gain, and bad pickups, could be a formula for feedback, and not the good kind.

 

[felineguitars]

Hi - I will chime in as a guitar repairer

Sounds like two things may be going on.
1)The pickups in the guitars are microphonic and need to be wax potted (dipped)
You can either have this done by a repairer or tech who has a wax pot, or can investigate and do it yourself if you are keen to do so.
Basically the coil windings sound like they are not solidified in wax enough to stop them from being moved slightly by the sound vibrations coming from the amp speakers.
This small amount of movement in ralation to the magnets in the pickups causes a signal to be generated which once amplified repeats the problem and you get microphonic feedback - just like sticking a plugged in microphone too close to a PA speaker and getting that familiar howl of noise.

To rectify the problem the pickups need to be desoldered, removed from the guitar, dipped in a wax solution (at the right temperature so as not to melt the bobbins and left to allow the wax to fully penetrate the coils.
I have discovered that a slow cooker at a low temperature works well or a parafin wax spa from a beauty salon supply (the kind used to soak feet in parafin wax).
Getting the right blend of wax is a bit trial and error .
A mix of parafin wax with a little beeswax is what many pickup winders use - I use a low melting point wax that Kent Armstrong put me onto a number of years back

Of course many players use this as an opportunity to upgrade to some better pickups rather than having the old ones dipped, and there are a lot of good ones out there.

2) There may also be too much gain - easily done when pedals like the Boss Metal Zone get involved
This will only go to accentuate any pickup problem, and reducing the amount of gain may help ease the problem a bit



I have written a piece on this via my own website
http://www.felineguitars.com/media/rants/Squeal piggy squeal.htm

 

[MotorCityPickUps]

All Right guys....and gals, if any. Question

The kids at church, on their own, started Metal Church Mondays (a Metal jam session after school on mondays).
Heres the deal we have a mod 50- T/D - Sl w/GC eggie slant 4x12 on one side
and a seminar head w/Gc eggie 4X12 straight on the other.
they use their little crates and peavy's at home with the buzz (metal) button on

They bring in strats, epiphone les paul, mostly low end guitars etc with what looks like Low-medium gain pickups.
We do have a BB pedal and some sort of dan electro metal pedal -

however, we are getting alot of squealing, buzz and noise out of the guitars/Egnater amps.

unless wrong I believe the culpret is the guitar pickups, am I Correct?

what is the best, least expensive way to remedy this. Should we get a couple of esp LTD guitars w/emgs in them?
Switch guitars with Motorcity Pu's, Ibanez, jackson are these noisless

Do we need like a decimater pedal for the noise???

and/or a couple of pedals, ie pandoras box or other????
Just tryin to get the shredding tone and lose the noise



I am not a metal guy but willing to learn to give the kids some direction
obviously EG5 is in the future.

big thanks

Good things to also mention and check...

Check all your cables : ) Sometimes they need replacing. Also check to make sure you are using a speaker cable Between the head and cabs. This may be obvious to you, but worth a mention: ) It very well could be a cold solder joint, bad pots, or the pickups. Considering the guitars are on the cheaper side, take a peek inside and make sure the connections are solid.
* Also worth a note, the gain could be just too much?? Pickups could be too close also especially in a high gain situation. They could need a quick dipping in the wax potting also. Check the obvious first though.
When waxing coils, please note that a fully saturated coil will get rid of microphony, but fully saturating the coils take prestine life out of the coil. None of my pickups are fully saturated- Solidifing the outer wrapings are desired, leaving the inner windings that have tension on them alone create a very musical feedback that is desired. I have yet to ever have a complaint of microphony, even with such Items are the Nuke humbucker. Some here can testify to this : ) Wax temp and observation of the time the coil reaches temperture are key : ) Hope this helps a bit.

 

[blumuz123]

That helps.......

So...........
with High Gain - Other than some hiss out of the amp.

EMG claims their Pu's are noiseless. as long as everything else is cool, are they really?

Are Wades high gainers noiseless as well?

Is it accurate to say that with High gain, if everything is done correctly,
you should only hear the hiss out of the amp?

or do you still need some kind of a noise eleminator etc

 

[felineguitars]

That helps.......

So...........
with High Gain - Other than some hiss out of the amp.

EMG claims their Pu's are noiseless. as long as everything else is cool, are they really?

Are Wades high gainers noiseless as well?

Is it accurate to say that with High gain, if everything is done correctly,
you should only hear the hiss out of the amp?

or do you still need some kind of a noise eleminator etc

With the guitar unplugged , the best you will get is that amp hiss only situation

With guitars plugged in other factors come into the mix
Proximity to the amps becomes an issue
There may be string feedback ( the potentially musical type - think Hendrix etc) as opposed to the uncontrolled squealing of microphonc feedback.

The direction the players stand can help shield the guitars from the output from the speakers.
If you cant escape the high pitch squeal then yes you will need to look at the pickup issue
If it is noise and keeping the guitars under control/quiet in-between the notes played/riffs etc then maybe look at a noise gate
The ISP decimator is very popular for that as is the old Boss NS2

 

[Deleted member 3860]

...

 

[jmgman69]

That helps.......

So...........
with High Gain - Other than some hiss out of the amp.

EMG claims their Pu's are noiseless. as long as everything else is cool, are they really?

Are Wades high gainers noiseless as well?

Is it accurate to say that with High gain, if everything is done correctly,
you should only hear the hiss out of the amp?

or do you still need some kind of a noise eleminator etc

Wades stuff is great!!!I've got 5 sets from him,3 HO sets and 2 lower output and they are pretty quiet but sound incredible If your set on changing pickups,I would give Wade a call and talk with the man...He's got IDEAS!!!!!

 

[blumuz123]

Good things to also mention and check...

Check all your cables : ) Sometimes they need replacing. Also check to make sure you are using a speaker cable Between the head and cabs. This may be obvious to you, but worth a mention: ) It very well could be a cold solder joint, bad pots, or the pickups. Considering the guitars are on the cheaper side, take a peek inside and make sure the connections are solid.
* Also worth a note, the gain could be just too much?? Pickups could be too close also especially in a high gain situation. They could need a quick dipping in the wax potting also. Check the obvious first though.
.[/quote]

to start.
Yep we have some microphonic guitar cables. They make noise just handling them unplugged from the axe. and thats with not touching the 1/4 jack. we will keep the search on.