Background "whoosh" - dirty power? RF?

[gtomax]

I've got an issue in 2 amps and I wonder if they're the same issue or different. If the same I wonder if it's AC power (they're in the same room) or ground wiring in the wall.

Amp plugged in and on, no guitar plugged in -

Amp 1 (brown Super) - intermittent crackles almost like a loose ground but there isn't I've chopsticked around. It has new power caps so not an old cap issue. Sounds like "dirty power" but maybe bad tube socket?

Amp 2 (Hiwatt) - low volume whoosh like a nice breeze . Never goes away, always in the background. Also has new power caps.

[gtomax]

On Amp 2 I've swapped both V1 and V2 tubes and the whoosh persists. All pots have been cleaned as well but maybe the vol pot needs replacing?

[pompeiisneaks]

You can rule out the house power by trying to move the amps to different parts of the house. Not every single circuit in the home should and will be noisy... but if it gets worse or goes away, then it's likely there's some kind of noise. You could also buy a power conditioner to handle the transients and clean the power up.

if the crackling comes from a specific pot (i.e. you can make the crackling come/go or get better/worse at specific settings, then maybe you need to clean it a bit more. Some pots, esp the ones used the most like volume, can get really dirty. I had to clean a pot on one amp like 3 times to get the pot moving freely like the others in the amp, it had so much gunk/dust/etc. It could be a bad pot, though, if there are some hardened spots on the track somewhere.

otherwise if you can't seem to find a specific spot causing the crackle, have you tried swapping in new tubes? Since the other amp doesn't crackle, maybe you could try a preamp tube from it to try and isolate a specific tube being noisy? Also, your tube pins may be dirty and causing sporadic connection...

all things to think about... hope that's helpful.

~Phil

[TonewolfAmps]

Do you have your cell phone or other Bluetooth device on you or near by when you are playing?

[thetragichero]

Do you have your cell phone or other Bluetooth device on you or near by when you are playing?

one of the folks i play with at church uses his cellphone on top of the keyboard for the chord charts and doesn't seem to understand airplane mode.... it's really fun hearing the computer noises over the couple thousand watt mains