GR-55 and GC-1 ground electricity / power leak and noise electric hum.

Started by Johnbob, April 17, 2014, 01:30:31 PM

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Johnbob

Hi,

I happily joined this forum two days ago, just after i bought a GC-1 Fender Roland guitar to fit with my good old GR-55.

I was looking here for clues about a big issue i was experiencing, let me explain that and give you the key for solving it :)

First of all, i experienced incredible amounts of noise in single-coil pickups, nothing "natural", electrical hum, scratches of all kind when i was touching strings. I soon realized i was facing a real electric problem, with electric charges accumulating on every strings. I also felt huge amount of voltage, when touching strings with my forearm or my lips (yeah ... yeah... i tried, just to make sure). Believe it or not, the electric pain was unbearable as i was touching string with any sensible skinned parts of my body.

Well, that's not such a big deal and you might not notice it, but normal pickup sound was totally unusable due to the electric hum i was telling you about before. I was able to ear huge sounds, like when you hotplug a jack on a very simple string touching.


I read all that i could here, and found a lot of questions about GR-55, noisiness, GC-1 hum, electric ground loops etc.

I got the solution when i tried my gear, which was fully functional, back in the shop i bought it.

The GR-55 HAS TO BE GROUNDED. One way or another, if you don't ground it, electricity WILL accumulate way back in your guitar through the 13 pin cable... I experienced that because i was using no direct monitoring on GR-55 audio outs.

Has you can see, GR-55 power in offers no groundage... the easiest way to get grounded is to plug your GR-55 audio outs in grounded monitors (guitar amp...)


Ah the magic when i finally eared my brand-new stratocaster with merely no hum, no pain or electricity induced finger drowsiness (i swear i could feel it) !
Cherry on the cake : no more "screeeetch" (macbook aluminium style static electricity) feeling while touching the GR-55 metallic unit :)

Hope my little message inspires you...

Pardonnez mon anglais.

Elantric

Thanks for the info

The GR-55 does include a large "Grounding / Earthing Screw" - intended to to be tied to house Earth Ground connection - in cases like yours.


Johnbob

Thx for the tip. The screw thing would certainly work without having to connect to a sound monitor.

In my case, i still had to realize that the sound problem was not related to the GC-1 guitar, or even worse to (every ?) single coil classical noise problem. See, i used the GK-3 on two other guitars without electrifying strings. It wasn't obvious i had to ground the unit for this precise guitar.

Also requires some guitar pickup knowledge not to jump too early on "i hate single pickup hum !".

See ya soon... i m still on the GC-1 GK pickup configuration on the GR side, i will post result for my guitar asap (finger picking no nails, hard pick play).