Dylan McKerchie

Does Cable Length matter? In a word..... YES... In our discussions about Scatter winding found here, we learned that anytime you have long runs of electrical conductors laying next to each other, there is a potential for capacitive loss. As we know, capacitors in their basic form are filters. The more capacitance something has, the more high frequencies it filters or cuts from the signal. Guitar cables, especially of poor quality are very susceptible to this. Cables longer than about 15 feet start showing signs of signal loss to a trained ear. When we add a pedal board, we usually almost...

Tuning Stability.... How? You may wonder.... How can one player bend and stretch and use a tremolo and somehow stay in tune, and I can't keep my guitar in tune for more than a few minutes. You may fight with tuning to the point of cursing tremolos forever and "blocking" them as many people do. You may want to resort to locking nuts and other extreme measures to stay in tune. Even if you don't use a tremolo, you may still fight with tuning.... There IS a way to win the fight. Lets look at two huge factors in tuning...

60Hz Hum Vs EMI/RF Hum in your guitar comes from a few different sources. We discussed how shielding can minimize RF/EMI noise HERE. Electromagnetic interference exists anywhere there is electricity. This is compounded by the fact that anything with a transformer in it, TVs, Fluorescent lights, Power supplies, all emit a lot of EMI because they contain coils. This means that you can have noise from devices that neither share a circuit with your guitar, or are connected in any way. This is because this interference travels through the air. No matter how effectively you have shielded your guitar, you...

Hum is bad.... No matter where we are, Radio Frequency interference is there. In the worst case scenario, It could be severe enough that you could hear voices or music from a radio station. More often, neon and fluorescent lights, dimmer switches, Televisions and all sorts of other devices can cause unwanted hum and crackling. High impedance guitar circuits are susceptible to this. Humbucker Pickups cut down on a lot of this. Learn more about how they do this here. While pickup construction and quality can have a major effect on the amount of RF interference, the rest of the...

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