Magnetic Deluxe

25Apr/10Off

Magnetic Deluxe

High thin buzzing from Fender Telecaster?

I have been given a fantastic present - an American Deluxe Fender Telecaster along with a Line 6 Spider III 30W amp. However, when I turn the tone knob up on the guitar, I hear a horrible dirty thin buzzing sound from the amp - a little like an electrical 'mosquito' whine. This doesn't seem to be anything to do with the amp. I am guessing it's something to do with the tone knob - or could it possibly be to do with my home environment having a lot of magnetic disturbance? Any ideas appreciated as I'm a total novice when it comes to guitars.

Could be a few different things.

The most likely culprit is single coil noise, as the other answerer said, this is somewhat to be expected when you put a lot of gain on a single coil. They don't eliminate the hum like a humbucker does, which means they retain a lot of the upper frequency sound (which a humbucker usually doesn't or can't) and distortion/gain could be causing noise in this area, sure.

After that, grounding. There will always be some noise, but how your guitar is wired (or wired improperly) will play the biggest role in how your rig handles it. If you touch your strings and the noise goes away, its a grounding thing, and to a certain extent unavoidable. There are things you can do to improve your shielding and grounding, but I suggest taking your guitar to a tech for that kind of treatment. You can learn how to do it, but a nice guitar should probably be worked on by someone who knows what they're doing, right?

Could be the amp. Line 6's don't have the absolute best distortion, and when I've played them I've noticed some weird distortion artifacts in the upper mids, ie, 3-6khz or so. This might be what you're hearing. Switch to a different amp model, ie, see if its there with Crunch vs Clean vs Insane, etc.

Could be line noise. Appliances, electrical gadgets, phones, computers, certain lights, etc can all cause electrical interference. Try turning the lights off, and see if that helps. If it does, take it to a tech and ask them to shield/ground the hell out of it, that's about your only option there. Sometimes bad power can be caused by refrigerators, dishwashers, or even power fluctuations from the power company or wiring in the house. You can't control that... the best you can do is get a good power strip/surge protector and hope for the best. The least expensive power conditioners usually aren't going to do much for you, the least expensive ones are basically just filters, its the higher priced ones that actually truly fix line noise. You can try running your amp off a UPS, ie, a battery backup, those act as line noise filters also... again, the quality of the filtering depends largely on the price. Some don't help much at all. =(

The response about the three prong vs two prong is also right on, and can be a culprit too. Not much you can do about it, really, except possibly get a decent power strip.

Good luck!

Saul