Electro-Harmonix Hum Debugger Hum Eliminator Pedal

It works. It’s digital, though and it does affect your tone. But so do noiseless pickups. In my opinion, I’d rather have true single coil pickups and use this pedal than use noiseless pickups. It’s wild because even with distortion pedals, you barely even need a regular noise gate because the hum is gone from the source to the distortion isn’t amplifying the hum like usual.

Ive played guitar for about a decade and a half and have never been mich of tech head so you can inagine my frustration when i discovered a humm with new suhr satin ran through my axe fx ii to a yamaha dxr15. Low and behold i learned a valuable lesson about single coil pickups. Perfectly eliminates buzz and hum that no such noise gate can. Best on clean tones, kinda messes with the very high and low ends on distorted tones but at those levels you do t hear hum amyways, or nothing that a simply gate can block good enough. But for ultra clean and crisp tones this device is the only answer in my book, i tried many different types of hum elimantors and a million different guitar/ampprocessor configurations which would only dwindle the signal i actualy wanted to hear. Save your future self a massive nightmare and buy this pedal even if you think you will never need it. Unrelated to the product, but whem i went to my basement to test it out my dishwasher upstairs sprung a leak and i luckily i was downstair otherwise i would have lost all my gear due to a massive amount of water flowing from the cieling into my jam space, non of my gear was harmed and i am very humbled by this sign from the guitar gods. Thank you tc electronics for saving my life from hum and permanant water damage. 🌈 UPDATE: Thought id try seymore duncan hotrails to negate the only single coil i had in the middle pot but they were kinda meh sounding, helped the buzz for one position, but not as good as the humdebugger. If i had all single coils id try the hum canceling backplate made by ilitch but idk much about wiriing to attempt it. Sticking with the humdebbuger since it is pretty versitile and easier to share with other guitarists i meet.

Removes the hum but at a price. Creates a kind of comb filter that butchers the tone you work so hard to get. Returned it.

This does a good job but not perfect. I have Charlie Christian pickups in a telecaster and the hum is significant even with shielding in the pickup cavities. With the Hum Debugger, I still get some crackle sounds through my amplifier, but it is mostly quiet. Some have reported that it changes the tone. I don't seem to have that with my guitar.

I had to try this out, because I needed to see if my theory about it was correct. And, I believe it is exactly what I had suspected.Once the HumDebugger arrived, I only needed to listen for just a few seconds on each of the settings to confirm my suspicions. That is to say, the effect is sufficiently apparent that I knew what I was listening to within very little time.The effect I heard can be described as resembling a very cheap reverb unit, the kind that are nothing more then a simple repeating echo at a very short delay. Radio Shack once sold such a cheap reverb for home stereos (and they were nothing more than a cheap novelty). So, how much delay? I would say that this delay is probably in sync with the hum that it anticipates (as in 1/60th of a second, or some multiple or fraction thereof). How does it anticipate hum? As stated by the manual, the device requires that it be powered from the included A.C. adapter, with an explicit statement that the device will simply not function if powered by battery (which might be fun to try to see *how* it behaves or *doesn't* behave). So, this seems to imply that the device depends upon the A.C. source, not only for power, but for a reference sample (signal) of the A.C. mains, which is the root source of all A.C. hum.Having studied this sort of technology, I can say that this device does a remarkable job considering what it's up against. But, do not expect it to act as a transparent device, as the reverb effect *is* noticeable, particularly on the strong setting. As such, the device would be abhorrent in studio setting.So, should you buy this pedal? Well, are you one of those tone-purist die-hards that feels obligated to use old fashioned single-coil pickups? Too bad, because this will utterly defeat the subtle benefit of true single-coil tone. Do you, perhaps for the sake of *image* alone, insist on playing a true vintage guitar that should *not* be retrofitted with hum-canceling pickups in hum infested settings? Well, there ya' go, that's what this box is for. It's for tonally non-critical settings where bad hum is unavoidable, and your role in the band is not that prominent. But, if you are *the* focus of your band, or you are a solo act, then this box, particularly when using the strong setting, will significantly dull your sheen.Ultimately, I think that this is fine piece of technology, at least from an academic viewpoint; but in practice it is far from ideal. I would *not* blame the brand for these shortcomings; this is just the nature of the beast.UPDATE: I found a circuit that better explains what this product may be using. There is such a thing as a comb filter that uses switched capacitors, and the switching for the capacitors can be driven by a sample from the AC power, which provides a comb filter that is perfectly tuned to the hum. While it would be possible to do the same thing with a time delay, as I had suggested, a time delay would be more expensive than this type of comb filter. Either way, a comb filter will alter the tone, just as a flanger with the LFO stopped will do. My hope for the future is would be DSP solution that uses a sample from the AC source to dynamically model the hum from the guitar and cancel the hum without any filtering or noticeable change in tone. But, I don't know that current DSP's are powerful enough to do that in real time. So, for now, a DSP-based solution seems to be just a fantasy.

I play jazz guitar. One of my favorite guitars is a Gibson ES175 with one P90 single coil pickup. Love the tone but hate the 60HZ hum. I do not use any pedals and go for a really clean tone. I tried the ISP Decimator and the Boss NS-2 to rid the hum but being that they are noise gates they don't work well on pedal free guitar tone. They are more for getting rid of noisy pedal hum. The EH Hum Debugger works perfect. My P90 is now quiet as a church mouse with no effect on natural tone or sustain. I love it. My only complaint is it is made out of cheap looking steel and for the price you pay for it they could have put a nice coat of paint on it. It is a bit of a eye sore but it works fantastic. If you want clean and quiet single coil tone buy one !!! Yes it is a bit pricey but worth every single penny. Not only does this little wonder take away ALL my pickup hum on the normal setting it even takes away some of the normal tube amp hiss all without any tonal change and believe me I have one picky ear when it comes to tone. If you are a hard rocker with a string of pedals than a noise gate may be your better choice but if you love that clean single coil tone this is what you want for sure.