Buzzing/static when recording

[dweezil]

Hi,

I'm running various electric guitars into my Mac via a Focusrite Scarlett 6i6. I'm getting a lot of background buzzing/static noise. It does does to reduce a lot when I touch anything metal.

If I run through my Two Notes stuff (which is boosting the signal) it is worse.

Not too sure it's bad earthing on the guitar as it does it with several guitars.

Its not the monitor as does it with when it's off.

Any suggestions welcome!

 

[Dave L]

The grounding seems OK, since the noise/interference your body is picking up (by essentially acting like a huge antenna) and passing on to the pickups gets dumped to ground when you are touching the guitar. Simply put it sounds like something in the area has got a lot of interference flying around the place. Fluorescent lights, dimmer lights and refrigerators are classic problems, for example.

 

[dweezil]

Thanks!!!

I've found the cause, it was a dimmer switch downstairs! Turns out it's a "leading edge" dimmer designed for halogen lights whereas I'm using LEDs now. A "trailing edge" dimmer like the Varlight V-Pro series should fix it - worse case is turn the lights off!