Solving Another Mysterious House Noise 

At 8:50 watch my electrician friend

The fact that the city actually helped and solved this issue is incredible.

SG: "If it werent for my audio engineering skills this problem would have never been fixed" Also SG: *walking around the neighborhood with an amp and pointing his guitar at things*

As an American, I'm more impressed your power company followed through than anything.

"Your big green box is causing a detrimental effect on my life" lmfao

As a person who was educated in high voltage electricity AND a lifelong guitarist I find it absolutely hilarious that you've found a faulty shielding on a transformer box with a guitar and an amp. I'd guess for the electricians it's one of those work stories they're going to tell 5 or 10 years from now

For those wondering about making a faraday cage to isolate a studio, you should know the shielding doesn't need to be solid (i.e. tin foil) to be effective. Wire mesh, chicken wire, "hardware cloth," and chain link will all work really well as long as they're properly grounded. If you do decide you want continuous cover, mylar blankets (like the scene in The Boys) are going to be your best bet as they're a super thin layer of foil between two layers of mylar resin. Again, the trick is grounding. All of that aside, I'm really impressed by both SG's ability to track down the noise and the power company's responsiveness. Solid work all around.

Hydro actually sent somebody - that's the real miracle here.

Neighbor peering through their blinds: Honey, the new guy across the way is running around outside with a guitar and amp like he's a crazy person, shouting at a power transformer. One week later, same neighbor: Wait, did our TV stop buzzing after that guitar Viking guy shouted at the transformer? I'm gonna go bake them a plate of cookies.

“Well, your big green Box in my neighbours yard is having a Detrimental effect on my life” - line of the century right there.

I work on sensitive magnetic instruments and stuff like this is the bane of our lives. We had issues with one of our stations a few weeks ago and were going nuts trying to find out why. We checked equipment, temperature, mains, weather. We only worked out what it was when we hung a webcam and found out it was the herd of cows in the next field coming to investigate the box. They all had magnetic ear tags. I’m genuinely impressed with your detective work. Sometimes you just have to get a sensor and go checking.

“House noise” sounds like a new avant-garde genre of music and I’m all in

7:22 Canada man challenges ghosts on the streets to battle him on a Shred off

Ham radio operator here. This is exactly the way hams track down RFI problems - except of course they don’t usually use a guitar. But the guitar is obviously a good directional antenna; I guess the internal shielding is blocking signal through the back of the guitar. What is NOT normal is the power people actually fixing the problem so quickly-I’ve heard horror stories involving months of calls to get a bad transformer fixed (I’m taking mostly about utility companies in the US).

I was absolutely cracking up when he was walking around his neighborhood holding his axe in the air like the guitar god he is. Just imagine what the neighbors were thinking...

I wonder if theres another musician in your neighborhood experiencing the same problem thinking it was normal, who is now wondering why the clicking suddenly stopped

I hate laughing at another man's misery, but after three days of chasing down a cricket you had me in tears.

dude this was an amazing video, congrats on the clean signal

Is it bad that I wish he'd get different problems like these all the time so we could get more videos like this

My pedal will occasionally will pick up radio signals specifically from horse track racing and it’s funny when I’m playing R&B and out of no where,”gooo gooo gooo number 17 is in the lead.” “Thanks for coming down to the Santa Nita horse races ladies and gentlemen.”

i like how this guy prioritizes his guitars over something like his fridge and washing machine

The tinfoil bit was funny, but I've often wondered about whether anyone makes Faraday cages for musicians. I know people spend $$ for sound-proofed telephone booths -- it seems like a no-brainer to build Faraday cage shield into it.

The most impressive thing about this video is that 1. You actually got a hold of someone at the electric company and 2. They actually came out and knew what was going on and did something about it. I. Am. Blown. Away.

You’re a hero!! I’ve been pulling my hair out for weeks because of noise. Endless googling, I’ve rewired my guitar twice, and I Even bought a new multimeter because i was convinced my cheap one was reading incorrectly. Then, the camera panned to the big green box. I swear i heard angels sing. That box is 20ft from my house. Time for me to call the electrical company and lie about my profession. Thanks!

Sammy G: Neither do I! *plays guitar with happiness and glee* Also Sammy G: *straight faced* I’m pretty happy with this outcome

I just loved how good old Sammy G actually brought the amp and guitar out to talk to the electricians. Also, this proves that almost everything can generate quality content (and a song) for the right person. I am almost looking forward and hoping for another phantom sound episode to complete the trilogy...

Ham radio skills help immensely with this kind of issue as well. The electric companies in the US are usually quite responsive to reports of EMI. Obviously they want their equipment to work properly as it saves them money if they can solve a minor problem before it becomes a big one. You did them a favor, and I'm very glad they treated you with respect and responded in a serious way. Sometimes those interactions don't go nearly as well.

His dad seems like the nicest guy ever.

Dude, i suuuper impressed that the electric provider company actually responded to your complaint and really did aomething about it. Where i live that would have never happened. More like "yeah, nothing we cand do, it is what it is".

... ok so I was the only one who got this recommended without knowing the channel beforehand thinking it was going to be a house sound design tutorial

From the thumbnail, I thought that he was gonna become a total conspiracy theorist. EDIT: He kinda did.

As an electrician, I thoroughly enjoyed this. Incredible how much energy gets away from those things.

This happened to me a while ago. When u would turn on my wah pedal I would pick up a gospel radio station.

Holy cow!! Thanks man!! I’ve been tearing every amp and guitar apart. I took a couple to my parents house on vacation and no noise!!! Got home noise was back. My wife said, “dude probably that big green box out front”. Then I watch this video today! Wow thanks man. I’m now 1000% better at soldering and have now accumulated so much amp tech equipment, just wanted to play guitar that’s all. I consider this just another path in my journey. Thank you.

I came in thinking that there was no way this was gonna compare to finding a secret room in your house but tbh it delivered

Grade-A troubleshooting skills. I spent 100s of hours of my military career chasing down mechanical, electrical, and sound faults on a submarine - this is an excellent example of how you chase down a fault, isolate equipment, and test.

After seeing what guitar he has, something nuts is about to happen

The struggle is real... I live next to a train track, and although the sound is not a problem as we have a "noise wall", but the interference is a real problem. I have to position my self in an awkward position to record anything without the constant electric noise 😭

The ghost of the guitar says turn down your gain.

9:35 begins to celebrate, then with a dead serious face : im pretty happy cracks me up

The perks of living in Canada and not latinoamericana Part 1: the electric company give a damn

For me personally, after trying the early solutions (which didn't work inside his studio) I would have loaded up the "humming devices" and driven to a friend's house several blocks away and tried it there. If the humming disappeared (as apparently it would have), I would have started working my way back to the studio, testing along the way, until the humming and clicking returned. I'd suggest testing every "half distance". ... That is, go half way back to the studio and test... No bad sounds?... Then go back half the remaining distance and try again. At some point using this "half distance technique", he would have stated picking up the interference. He could have then begin triangulating the source of the interference from there. As it turned out the interference was coming from outside his house, he could have saved a lot of work by finding that source before wasting all that looking inside the house. If, however, the outside readings were clean, then (and only then) he should have taken his "testing equipment" back inside the house and worked from there. Anyway... It's just a thought (As Beau of the Fifth might say.)

This is super useful. My home in the West End was bad for this and my current home in St. James does it too, but I've been told it's because of open-ground wiring, since the wiring was upgraded from knob and tube, but done by do-it-yourselfers before codes came in and made it all proper. I'll have to see how close I am to one of these boxes. Cheers!

7:56 every guitarist’s reaction when finding the source of the hum “should we shoot it?”

I was wondering for years what that mysterious ticking noise was I heard every time I played my electric guitar. Wasn't my proudest moment when I found out it was the metallic second hand of my watch, that was picked up by the humbuckers... Always reminded me of a metronome

Thats just crazy how an annoying noise coming from a guitar amp ended up resulting in the discovery of a transformer box with faulty shielding. Unexpected is the best word to describe that I think.

"Your big green box in my neighbor's yard is having a very detrimental effect on my life" -Samuraiguitarist 2020

Possibly one of my favourite videos on RU-vid. It had everything and I was hooked from the start. The suspense, the thrill of the chase and the beautiful pay off at the end. The tin man suit was just the icing on the cake! 😂

Should have titled this video "Canadian Man Covers Himself in Aluminum Foil. You Won't Believe What He Finds!"

I found the source of the ticking... Its a pipe bomb!

I also live in canada. A really stereotypical “canadian” part of canada. But whoever the people are who work for your city’s electrical department or whatever need to be given a trophy for nicest workers ever! When my wifi is down and i call the company they arent nearly that useful! Well anyway, loved the video AND the music! edit: 69 likes.........

It's incredible that they answered, and didn't hang up (ahem got cut off for some unknown reason) half way through your explaining it. Let alone actually coming out and doing something about it. Total kudos to that company!

From the thumbnail we all knew where this was going

The first step in troubleshooting is to turn down the volume on the guitar. If the noise goes away then the source is the guitar picking up electromagnetic radiation. Shielding a guitar with single coil pickups can greatly reduce the noise. Humbucking pickups were invented for that specific reason.

When I saw the thumbnail I had assumptions, and the beginning of the video confirmed those assumptions. And I love it

Was having the exact same problem, wasn't even looking for a solution yet. The algorithm knows all.

I hope this becomes a series

My most hated electronic evil I've been living with is a variable speed well pump that sends feedback through the whole house and ruins recordings every time someone uses a faucet.

It was a bit funny when - after all that appliances unplugging - you showed on camera your battery-powered amp :D

A nearby wifi hot spot caused a nice 1 Hz ish blip in my case. It doesn't affect the guitar, just the amp. Turning the amp 90 degrees reduces it. Shutting the wifi off eliminates it. Haven't tried moving the wifi yet, or a different model of wifi hot spot.

If you are going to try the shielding angle so this doesn't happen again, I can recommend having copper mesh lining an entire room, floor, ceiling and walls, then connect that copper mesh to a ground connection. That way you'll have built a Faraday Cage room, free from outside interference.

I think your audio engineering skills mainly consisted out of calling your dad... Dads just know things

This was the most elaborate house tour I have ever seen.

I've been doing RF engineering for quite a while and audio engineering is what I'm in school for now. I also do a lot of recording and I'm a musician as well. I've been chasing down interference for years. I used to walk around my neighborhood with a radio tuned to a empty unused space on medium wave (or any radio that receives AM broadcasts) looking for whatever I can hear at my flat. There's a lot of things that can cause buzzing or clicking. I've been able to eliminate most of it on my own, but there were some things that I just had to live with until I could move to another location where I had a bit more control over powered devices.

Ha! A “Faraday Body Wrap”... I don’t think so! Note to musicians: always bring your axe & amp when new house-shopping.

My man full on fixed an issue with the mains electric circuit you deserve a medal or something

*In 10 years at school* My daddy is a fireman! What does your dad do? Samurai Baby: uhhhh.........

The first mysterious noise video was my absolute favourite from the channel, but it seemed like it could never be repeated. It's so satisfying to have an equally genuine follow-up!

Reminds me of 2 things that happened to me. A few years ago, I got my first electric guitar and was trying to find a longer and more reliable cable. My dad used to be in a band, so he had a whole collection of old cables and a few amps. One of the cables and was only 3 feet long and didn't work well, but when both ends were plugged in it picked up a radio station. (Edit: I wrote this just after watching the intro, I didn't think this would be so relevant!) The second thing, my family picked up an old Kimball electric organ last year. We put it in the living room by the wifi router, and at some point the next week, someone put the router on top of the organ to keep the dogs from destroying it. The next time I turned the organ on, the signal from the router interfered with some electronics in the organ and produced a lot of feedback. I thought there could be a pinched wire in it, so I took the router off the top, opened it up, moved some wires out of the way of each other, played it, and it was fine. I closed the top and put the router back on and was confused when it made more feedback. That happened a few more times. Finally, I had open with the router off and sustained a note while I put everything back and found out it was the wifi. Now we have a thick book in between them to keep that from happening again.

You're lucky to be in Canada. In my country, they would say they would look into it, send nobody out to check the problem and then charge me extra because the problem wasn't on their end.

Seeing him hold the exact guitar I own is terrifying and surreal

there is very likely someone else in the neighborhood that is very thankful that clicking had mysteriously stopped, and have no idea how it happened

Man, this topic hits too close for comfort. Hearing this click after our last move has been very demotivating, after having been to great lengths to get rid of other sources of noise (changed pedal power, changed to all humbuckers, added copper foil on top of the shielding paint, ...) But if the source is external (I suspect we have a utilities shaft behind the wall), I'm doomed to never find piece short of building myself a Faraday cage...

Late to the show I know , but years ago in my audio engineering class this was the answer to a semester long question my professor had made for us. The idea was to follow signal flow and understand where things go wrong. I opened this video thinking “ ha wouldn’t it be funny if ….. “ and mildly delighted that was it . P.s. someone did come up with the answer the second to last day of the class p.p.s we only got 3 try’s per beginning of class

"Holy mackerel! One take!"

1:39 That was one of the smoothest cheeky turn transitions I’ve seen in a while

This could have easily become a lovecraftian horror story.

I had a similar problem at my dad's house... It was near lots of radio stations and the many radio signals were being captured by ANY amplification devices, even battery casette players (no fm/am receiver) captured It... Basically recording at the place was an absolute hell Never got to resolve any of my problems, but it was kind of funny listening to the radio with a guitar amp and no receiver

You told that lady from the electric company the story of her life ! and no joke , i tip my hat to the electric dudes , nobody would give a damn about a guitarist, Yeeey for canada

my first thought was "swap out the gear". you said that the gear doesn't matter. so my second thought was electrical interfearence and that idea was shared with the studio guy. his idea is unplugging appliances and my thought was to borrow your neighbours outlet and see if it is the power grid or if it is something in the house.

I hope you´ll have a lot more mysterious house noises! Your approach to those is just awesome. Maybe you should start some kind of problem solving series one day!

Sam…I had this same symptomatic behavior of an insidious clicking sound with a 1983 Rivera Era Fender Super Champ I used to own. Your problem was completely different and wholly external. Mine was due to a component failing. In my case, the act of plugging gain boosting gear, e.g., a distortion pedal, made my problem worse and suggested the issue was in the power amp stage of my amp. In my situation, I eventually traced the issue to a wonky 6V6 power tube that had an internal fault and was inappropriately sensing a cap in the amp circuit discharging, aka a true fluke. Changing the pair of 6V6 tubes solved the issue.

Dr. Therapist: Robo-Sammy G isn't real, he can never hurt you. 6:54:

I'm really glad you tried this, I was so mad with airborne noise at one point I almost wrapped myself in foil.

You just saved the whole city from an EMP

I legit quit playing guitar in 2013 because of unwanted buzz in my apartment. Either it's one of the appliances or one of the electric poles in front of the building. Got one this month and back to playing/learning. Great vid!

Like 20 years ago at school, they had and amp that would sometimes pick up some sort of (maybe) russian voice speaking. The first time it happened we freaked out haha.

Recently, my basement has been exhibiting similar issues. Despite recently installing Dark Moon pickups (the witch) and a Jimmy Page wiring setup on my guitar, I suspected a grounding problem. However, after checking thoroughly, I found no issues with the grounding. I did notice that at times, I would pick up conservative radio and experience a terrible hum. I observed that, similar to the situation in the video where you walk around outside, turning in a certain way would cause the sound to disappear. However, recording with limited space for movement has been a nightmare. Even the slightest motion causes interference, ultimately ruining the take.

The genuine joy on your face at the end made my day

Pretty fucking amazing the electrical company fixed that in such a quick time frame. In my neck of the woods DTE would not have even considered helping.

Can't wait for the country song about mouse droppings in the next episode

This reminded me of better call Saul when the brother tore up his house cause of electricity.

Ladies and gentlemen, that's what we call scientific method.

I'm more than impressed by the lengths that you went to find the hum. My quest for complete and total hum annihilation is just about complete, but it's been quite the journey involving cable and board power supply upgrades, humbusters, line conditioners, a dedicated circuit and lots of tracing. I never got to the point of wearing a tin foil hat, or walking around the neighbourhood with a portable, but ... pretty close.

There should be a new mysterious sound hunting series

Sammy G I thought about you when I had my own mysterious noise. It was the same type of sound. I timed it to 120hz or 2/sec IIRC. It turned out to be something to do with my pedal power supply that was plugged into a smart plug...that was plugged into an actual surge protector rated at 800 joules. So I plugged the power supply straight into the surge protector and it went away. The weird thing was that it didn't start immediately upon me plugging in the power suppl the first time. It was weeks to 1 or 2 months later.

I wish there was a lot more mystery noises in SammyG's house, because these videos are one of the best videos overall

When I was in college, I built a home-made amplifier that was an absolutely excellent AM radio receiver. Guitar amps, due to all their non-linearity, can detect and demodulate all kinds of crap out of the air and have it show up in your sound. Properly RF blocking an amplifier is no easy task (maybe I should build a pedal to do just that).

Imagine how sammy g got jenny to wrap him in alluminum foil

Now you're gonna have issues with your pickups picking up the closest radio station or something like that. The best bet is to make a faraday cage around your studio and ground it. It doesnt need to be tin foil, it can be just a web of wires. That solves all the issues with em interference