Picking up radio waves

[PeteeBee]

Why does this happen?

I was jamming along with some peeps on bass instead of guitar which I normally play. Step on a fuzz pedal and get full volume radio station. I was kind of like but everyone else was like When I would play a note it went away. It does it on guitar as well but not nearly as loud.

Follow up: can I use this to my advantage? like have some device transmitting a drone and my fuzz pedal acts as a receiver to play it when I'm not playing. Like an elaborate, hard way to control sample.

[D.o.S.]

It happens because of poor shielding.

Follow Up: Yes, and yes.

I miss my Russian Muff for this. I think a couple of my pedals still do it, though.

[Dandolin]

I'll let someone else explain why--it's a mix of the pedal wiring and your proximity to strong signals. I'm in your camp--I love when it happens! Your idea is great--theoretically I guess you could, if you were transmitting in the right frequency range? Don't use too strong a transmitter or you might wake the sleeping FCC giant, lol. Penny Pedals is coming out with a new version of it's Radio DLX lofi pedal that will have a selectable setting that is designed to pickup radio signals....

[DRodriguez]

Same thing happens on my Algal Bloom when I turn everything up real loud, especially the power knob.

You could use a ducker or side chain compression to accomplish this. Think radio, the volume of the music goes down whenever the DJ talks. Use your guitar signal to duck or compress the sound of the radio.

I posted this before, but on my first drum recording ever, we did an equally complicated triggering of a radio by gating the radio and triggering the gate via various drums on a kit.

[Invisible Man]

My fuzz Factory does this, too. It's great! Only, I like to fun the noise through a Moog MuRF downstream, then loop the pattern. So it's like radio drumbeats that I can make more weird noises over.

No one else likes it. That's why...I'm here.

[waltdogg]

This happened all the time at my old house, as mentioned anything with weak shielding, stupid high gain without noise suppression, or any shorted connection would cause it to happen. Even my stereo receiver would do it when I'd connect my iPod and the connection wasn't fully made. It got a little annoying at high volumes but I still thought it was damn funny coz it was an Asian station and it would be coming in fairly clear. Then we moved to a lockout, the walls were thick enough or the power was clean enough to block interference.

[rfurtkamp]

The old Dano Black Coffee mini-pedal was the king of that for me.

I got Mexican radio the minute the sun went down and it was plugged in.

LA COOCARACHA!

[t-rey]

Happened to me a lot in one of the places I lived. Usually picked up crazy talk radio stuff. I always thought it was kind of cool - like commercial breaks between my shitty riffs.

[PeteeBee]

Any thoughts on how to induce it? Like can I just go buy a radio transmitter and hook that up to a cassette player? That's my dream. And how would I guarantee I'm transmitting the frequency my fuzz picks up?

I'm getting stoked on almost doing like a noise dj set.

[rfurtkamp]

One of the old Mr Microphone things that transmits on the 'public" dial around 88 FM will do it, if you can hook that into a CD/Mp3 out on something.

[waltdogg]

Try an old cheapo patch cable that works but lacks sheilding or has a slight off sized plug so it will short the sleeve and tip but still pass signal. That might be made up actually, but I can't think of anything else other than a fuzz pedal being in my friend's chain that caused this the most at the old place.

[stripes]

I posted this before, but on my first drum recording ever, we did an equally complicated triggering of a radio by gating the radio and triggering the gate via various drums on a kit.

this sounds awesome

[Invisible Man]

I posted this before, but on my first drum recording ever, we did an equally complicated triggering of a radio by gating the radio and triggering the gate via various drums on a kit.

this sounds awesome

Rad. Would love to hear more about this.

[DRodriguez]

this sounds awesome

Rad. Would love to hear more about this.

Thanks! I really should get around to remixing it for fun one of these days. Here's the full untrimmed session.



We went less radio crazy at the start. This was when I was trying out audio school (I left fairly quickly and just did some real audio work). This was in the class of a guy called Rich Hinklin. Who worked under Jack Endino on crazy albums like Nirvana and Soundgarden. Probably one of the most helpful guys I've met in terms of honesty and encouragement in the realities of the audio world. First time I met him, he told a classroom full of hopeful kids that we'd be lucky if one of us ended up with a job in audio. I guess I was that one.

Plus he got bonus points for naming his black labrador EBow.

The drummer was Greg Gilmore (drummer from 10 Minute Warning, Mother Love Bone, Jack Endino, and more) improvised a drum solo. Meanwhile, we were triggering a mangled radio set to the local classical station via an analog gate. We changed what was triggering the gate at different times, but the best results came from the HiHat. Meanwhile we did some live tweaking of the radio with a 4 band eq, Think manual filter sweeps, etc.