Guitar Amp! Problem! Help! Please! Hurry!?
Question:Okay.. everytime i turn my guitar amp on i keep getting this really loud crackling noise even when the volumes turned down and stuff. what is this crackling and how do i get rid of it?
Answers:
Electronically, this noise would have to be coming from a part of your amplifier circuit after the volume control, which is why the volume control has no effect. Either that or the volume control itself has a loose contact. You'd probably need some test equipment like an oscilloscope to be able to troubleshoot it. What you would need to do is put the scope probe on the amplifier output and trace backwards in the circuit while listening for the crackling on a speaker.
I would suspect either an intermittent connection, a capacitor that is breaking down, or if it is a tube amp, possibly one of the output tubes. It most likely has nothing to do with the wiring between the amp and the guitar.
There are four possible reasons for the crackling noise that you are getting.
The first is a grounding problem. Your guitar and amp should both have grounding wires built directly into the hardware that help to filter out any unwanted noise. If this is the case, turn the tone knobs down on your guitar, then turn on the amp. If it is a grounding problem, there will not be any crackling noises. To get this fixed, you can get guitar wiring books to teach you how, or you can simply take it to a guitar repairman.
The second reason you might get those noises is if you have a tube amp. Tube amps have to warm up in order to perform the best. Turn on your amp for about 15 minutes, playing softly (don't use effects or a pre-amp) with clean tone. If the crackling doesn't clear up after that, then you have blown your speaker or overloaded a circuit.
The way that you might have overloaded the speaker or the circuit would be if you used
1 overly wound pickups or a humbucker
or 2 you hooked up effects pedals with the limit or the level set too high.
You could also have bad wiring which takes a long time to test as you will have to get a voltage meter and individually test each component (like resistors, capacitors, and all the actual wiring) and make sure that it is working and transmitting properly. Usually if this is the case, it is worth buying a new amp.
Good news though! Sometimes that crackling noise can come just from the "magnetization" of the speaker coil (this is the part that turns the electronic signal to the sound cone) and can be fixed simply by playing regularly.
I have played for many years and I am fully aware of almost everything that can go wrong. I have worked with amps ranging from a small cheap Peavy amp, to a double-stack Marshall with a high power tube driven head and an effects rack.
If you have a tube amp, check the tubes. If one is cracked, just replace it (they pop in and out like christmas lights).
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