DP-02 - annoying hum

[Katie Marie]

Hi there Tascam people! Really hope someone can help...

I recently moved to the States and someone has very kindly lent me a Tascam DP-02 digital recorder. I had a play with it last week and noticed that when I plug my acoustic guitar in there is an earthing/grounding type hum and when I touch the metal case of the DP-02 it goes away. This doesn't happen when I plug my bass guitar into the unit...just my Takamine acoustic. I've tried different jack leads and the hum is still there. I brought my little Korg Pandora 4 track digital recorder and I doubled checked to see if the hum was there and it wasn't.

I've no idea about this type of thing so any thoughts and advice would be very much appreciated

Thanks for reading this far!

 

[Jarno]

You don't tell how are you connecting your guitar to DP-02.
1. Which kind of cable? Standard TS guitar cable? TRS cable?
2. Into which input?
3. In case of MIC/LINE|GUITAR input jack, in which position the switch is?
And one more thing: is your Takamine equipped with active electronics?

BTW ... moved to the right sub-forum

 

[Katie Marie]

Hi there! Thanks for replying....

1. Im using a standard jack-jack cable , I've tried two different leads that I know work just fine everywhere else.

2. I plugged my guitar into the jack socket on input 1 and then input 2 to make sure it wasn't one of the inputs that was playing up.

3. Well I moved the switch to guitar, then moved it to mic just to see if it make a difference and it didn't seem to change at all.

.....and yes my Takamine is fitted with a CT4DX pre amp which is active.

And thanks for putting my post in the right place - I was too sure which to choose from!!

 

[Jarno]

Okay! I used to have this (kind of) problem with pre-amp equipped Takamine of my band's guitar player some 20 years ago, but I'm not sure if it's the same. Don't remember all the indermediate solutions we did (it was a thin electric wire leading from one of guitar strings to players body or from players body to guitar lead jack sleeve or ...), but final solution was to use a DI-box with ground lift switch. There is another (maybe cheaper) way to implement ground lift, though (but don't know if this works with DP-02): use a special cable wired like this:

Guitar                 DP-02
Standard TS jack       TRS jack
TIP ------------------ TIP
SLEEVE --------------- RING
       (unconnected)-- SLEEVE

 

[Katie Marie]

Ahhh ok....makes sense! I actually have a very nice LR Baggs Venue DI back in the UK which I've always used for recording, which is maybe why I've never heard this hum before! I'll get it mailed over and hopefully that'll fix the problem....thank you so much for your help