H9 Buzzing – Power/RFI/EMI?

[tbif1]

Ok, so I'm away for a couple of months overseas, and have taken a small guitar setup with me. It consists of:

Telecaster (Dimarzio area T noiseless pickups, but no shielding in the cavities) >

Strymon Timeline >

H9 >

Yamaha THR10 practice amp.

I haven't used this exact setup at home in Australia, so I'm not 100% sure whether this problem is specific to Indonesia (where I am now) or not.

Basically, it seems like the power here is very dirty, and I have been getting very loud buzzing when I have my fingers off the strings on the telecaster (I believe this is EMI/RFI, but I am no expert). The level of noise is unacceptably loud, much louder than what I am used to, and has basically made the whole setup unplayable. I discovered that if I play the amp off batteries, with no pedals plugged in, its fine, like a normal guitar, but anything else is too noisy.

However I noticed the other day that I adding the Timeline back into the chain doesn't change the noise level, only the H9.

So I did a test, Running just from the Tele>Timeline>Amp (running off batteries), and then Tele>H9>Amp(also running off batteries. Sure enough, the noise is way louder with the H9 than with the timeline. I have tried this where the only thing plugged in to the power is the specific pedal, but the results are the same. I am using the supplied power adaptors for both pedals

To be clear, the H9 doesn't seem to be generating a level of background noise by itself, but rather greatly increasing the level of noise coming from the telecaster when I am not touching the strings.

Here is a link to a short video I made, demonstrating what I am talking about:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7d9th5sB4RVaXN3ckhXblJlbVk/view?usp=sharing

I was wondering if anyone has any idea what is going on, and more importantly, any suggestions as to what I could do to fix it? Is there a fundamental difference in the power supply design of the two pedals that makes one more susceptible to such interference, or is there something wrong with my H9? Would an isolated multi output pedal power supply fix this? Or some kind of power filtering/conditioning?

Obviously shielding the Telecaster would be a good move too, but it may well be hard to find all the required materials where I am now.

Thanks in advance to anyone who has any ideas!

[nickrose]

Having no knowledge of Indonesia I can only guess, so may be entirely wrong, so act accordingly.

It sounds as if you have a serious grounding condition – this could be dangerous, so I would strongly advise you to get this resolved.

The fact that using the H9 makes the louder noise is probably due to effects emphasizing some frequencies more than others.

Get a good electrician very soon !!

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