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Active electronics: how much hiss is normal, and how do I get rid of it?


strtdv
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I'm new to bass, after playing electric guitar for 13 years.
I'm pretty familiar with noise/hum on passive pickups and ground loop issues with pedals etc, but I've never had an instrument with active electronics.

I bought a used 2004 Warwick Thumb bolt on 5 string, which I believe has gold label MEC pickups and stock active treble/bass controls.
There's a distinct high frequency hiss, it's unchanged by touching the strings, it's louder when I boost the treble, quieter when I cut the treble, and quieter when I roll off the volume (particularly rolling it down from full volume to around 7-8 makes the biggest reduction in noise).
It's quite pronounced, you probably wouldn't hear it in a band setting but at home it's definitely quite intrusive.

The electronics all seem to be working as they ought, there are no crackles etc from the pots, and I've a brand new battery in the bass.

Is hiss like this normal?
What can I do to get rid of it?

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Probably normal. At home practice levels I can hear the hiss from the Glockenklang pre in my Sandberg, even though I generally have the treble control backed off a bit. Mind you that's only when I stop playing and actively listen out for it. No tweeter in my cab btw.

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The hiss is still there when I bypass the EQ, must just be a consequence of having active single coil pickups then.

Don't know about cheap electronics, I would expect them to be pretty good on a bass that cost £2k new.

My best bet is probably a noise gate then I suppose.

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I'm just playing about with my Warwick Corvette (2004). I have the same "problem" on active when I boost the treble. I too have been trying to prod around with an earth-wire connection and nothing I touch with the earth makes any difference.

Comparing this to the Streamer Stage 1 (2005), there's no hiss on the Streamer. The Streamer does, however, have a very different pre-amp. There's a lot more electronics in the Streamer. So maybe that's what you get for a few more £.

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Well I took out the pots and reshielded the cavity with heavy duty copper tape (grounding the cavity to the bridge) and this seems to have helped things considerably.

A noise gate on a fairly low seeing has got rid of what remained.

On an unrelated note I also waxed the bass and lemon oiled the fretboard and it looks ten times better. My goodness that wood was dry!

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[quote name='Grangur' timestamp='1415340496' post='2599332']
Thanks for letting us know that. I was thinking last night of doing that. What prompted me was when it started humming loudly when the microwave was being used in the next room.

What noise gate have you used?
[/quote]

I'm actually using one on a TC Nova System that I have for guitar, seems to work very well (as far as I remember you can set frequency threshold as well as volume threshold which is useful)
I find the dimmer switch in the room below me is the worst offender for noise coming through my guitars, even humbuckers don't solve that problem.

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Further update to the hiss issue in case anyone else is having similar issues.

I got further improvement by raising the pickups to the height Warwick recommend (2mm from the strings both treble and bass side when fretted at the 24th fret)

How does this improve noise? Well it meant the output was higher so the signal to noise ratio was better and I turned the amp gain down a bit as I wasn't needing it as high to get a good output, so the noise got considerably quieter. Now no longer needing the noise gate.

The pickups had been set very low, about 6-7mm away from the strings when fretted at the 24th fret.

Edited by strtdv
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