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Vintage threads from the first ten years

Re: Texas Specials

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10/15/1999 12:08 PM

Re: Texas Specials

We were preparing to play at church the other night, I had my PRS with a modified Gibson humbucking (with a cover) in the bridge. We were going nuts trying to find a source of buzz- it turned out to be my rig being influenced by a nearby dimmer switch. Turn off the switch, the buzz went away (also the light). My rig is normally very quiet in nearly every other situation. Dimmer switches stink!

10/17/1999 12:09 AM

Jim:

Our local music store moved into a space vacated by a stereo retailer a few years back, with heavy duty dimmer switches in all of the rooms. I managed to convince them to remove the dimmer from the guitar amp room, but it still picks up the noise from the acoustic guitar room next door. So much so that you don't want to play their single coil guitars for very long... But they sure do sell a lot of guitars with humbuckers! < g >

I've been using simple diode dimmers on some of my lights at home and have not noticed any noise at all from them (one lead from the wall is run through a diode which cuts back the light output maybe 40%). Although some variable dimmers say that they have RF noise suppression circuitry, they all seem noisy to me.

Steve Ahola

11/17/1999 2:24 PM

as i'm sure you know, dimmer switches aren't the only bad offenders. my single coils pick up alot of noise from fluorescent lamps. interference from the bigscreen TV is surprisingly bad as well. i had never imagined that a single coil pickup would have such problems in a home type environment. i can usually diminish the level of interference by staying away from the cheesecutter positions that use a single pickup, as the current fenders seem to be wired to take advantage of noise cancellation when multiple pickups are selected.

11/18/1999 11:19 AM
GFR	The dimmers you use at home are not so bad, just turn them all up or all down and the noise is gone. What I find really annoying is that stage light effects use the same kind of circuits as home dimmers (SCR's and TRIAC's) and it's much more fun to gig with lights than without them...

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