Hissing noise normal or not?

[Swarbs74]

Hello everyone, I'm a total novice on bass, played guitar for decades but just now appreciating the world of bass and the differences I need to learn. 

My bass is a Luna P Bass and it makes a hissing noise when plugged into my focus rite solo and I'm using headphones. If I turn the tone control down the hissy noise lessens only a bit. 

So far I've tried to use a Zoom B1 and a Sonicake Boom Ave but the sound quality was poor and the hiss when using drive and compressor was very loud and off putting. I don't have an actual bass amp, ive tried the pedals through two notes wall of sound via the focus rite solo audio interface. 

Im aware single coils on guitar can hum so I'm wondering if this is normal, is there anything to try, noise gates or is this just how bass is? 

[hooky_lowdown]

P basses are humbucking, they're not single coils, so the noise shouldn't be from them. The hissing is probably a grounding issue, check there is a wire under the bridge. If the bridge is black (i.e it's painted and not chrome metal) the copper ground wire won't be grounding properly. There's a simple fix, determine where the copper ground wire touches the bridge, and scrap the paint or finish off with a craft or Stanley knife.

[dannybuoy]

Is it noisy with just the bass into the interface and no pedals in between?

Edited February 13, 2021 by dannybuoy

[Hellzero]

Two other issues are poorly designed PWM power supplies plugged to the same ... (multi)plug and LED lights in the room. LED lights mains pollution is just awesome, people don't believe it until they come across a problem like yours...

[dannybuoy]

Dimmer switches too - my setup hummed like crazy when the dimmers were on until I replaced my patch cables - if they have plastic around the jack plug then they're not well shielded.

[Skybone]

Also, how close are you to the monitor, and are you facing it when you're playing?

Try sitting at right angles to the monitor when recording.