IT REALLY WORKS

First a little background info so this will be s bit long. I'm a church musician so 90% of what I play is clean. I own really great gear. I own over a dozen guitars but my main setup is a Carvin CT6M guitar and an Egnater Renegade.
I am constantly getting a loud hum from my amp. It's so bad,at times, my clean notes sound fizzy. Believe me,nothing ruins a pretty clean part like annoying buzzing mixed in with your notes. This happens with my other guitars too.
I tried everything. High end cables, putting my effect into the input and not the loop, checking my effects one by one,using no pedals at all,I even changed pickups. Finally I took the amp home and checked the tubes in my tube tester. Changed some and plugged it in. Total silence. GOT IT BACK TO CHURCH AND LOUD HUM.
So I went on a quest to find something to battle hum and I bought a few things, none of which worked. Of course my noise gate kills the hum when I'm not playing but it does nothing when I am.
Then I came across the Hum Debugger. Did a load of research and I got one.
I hooked it up fired the gear up and as usual a loud hum. put the debugger on normal stepped on it and the hum is gone. Just that simple. This thing works great.
I've read a lot how it affects your tone. For all practical purposes, I hear no change in my clean tone other than no hum- no more.
Can't wait to see how it does on my single coils.
If you got hum, get one and you won't any more.

Amazing Noise Reduction

As the title of the review indicates, this pedal is amazing. I am always impressed by the quality of electro-harmonix pedals. To my ear, they seem to do what they are supposed to, and nothing else (in the best possible way). By this I mean that they provide the desired effect, but they do not alter or strip your guitar of tone. I was skeptical of this pedal would perform. My experience with noise reduction in the past has been that they have a tendency to deaden or muffle the tone when they are successfully removing noise, and when they do not mess with your tone, they are also not removing the unwanted hum. I play a single coil equipped strat through various tube amps. I generally like a sparkly, somewhat clean tone, and this tone is easy to lose when you put pedals in the signal chain. My practice room, the room in the house available for guitar related activities, also unfortunately has some sort of funky electrical issue which causes serious hum and noise when I play through single coils. It is bad. With this pedal, the single coil hum was totally gone, without any loss of tone or sparkle. I was blown away. If you play single coils, and value your tone, but hate extra noise, this is the pedal for you. It works, with no nasty side effects.

A Must-Have for the Working Guitarist

Guitarists put this box in your tool box. One of the most useful tools next to the stompbox tuner. Here's my experience with this box:

I play at Buddy Guy's Legends in Chicago regularly and the building, including the stage, is encircled by a strong magnetic field, caused by a large transformer in the basement of an adjoining office building.

This causes big problems for guitarists with single coil guitars, including Buddy, as he favors singlecoil guitars these days. So when the Hum Debugger came out, Legends bought a few - one for Buddy to use and also a few more for the booked bands to use. In fact, it is now required at Legends if you have non-hum cancelling single coil pickups on your guitar.

I was skeptical at first but the Hum Debugger silenced my Airline Tuxedo beautifully, without any noticable tone/response change. Don't walk - Run and get one of these especially if you have a noisy single coil guitar

Hum Debugger

Nice pedal at a good price. The staff at Sweetwater did a great job keeping me informed about the shipment and I got it within a reasonable period of time.

The pedal (knock on wood) so far seems to solve the problems that I was having. The hum is almost all gone!

Thank you

This thing actually works!!!

I play nightclubs, and many of them have power issues, seems like most of them have some kind of hum or buzz in their power. One in particular that I play regularly has an annoying buzz that is louder than the sound coming from my Strat (which has noise-cancelling pickups and a dummy coil under the pickguard). I've tried everything else including power conditioners, hum x, etc. Nothing worked, until I tried this. Granted, there is a minor difference in tone, and on the strong setting it almost sounds like you've added just a slight touch of delay, but it's not been noticed by anyone but me. It sure is better than the buzz! This pedal does exactly what it says, I keep it on my pedalboard and use it only when I have to, but it's been a lifesaver so far! The reason I bought this is that I read online that the power at Buddy Guy's club in Chicago is so bad that if you play there, you are required to use one of these, they bought like six of them for the club! If you don't want to change your pickups on your Tele or Strat, and you play clubs, keep one of these with you at all times!

It Works !!

I stayed up way too late playing my 1974 Stratocaster last night.

EH recommends that this be the first pedal in line but I set it up at the end as a test. In front - Strat - Tech 21 Tri - Boss Chorus Ensemble - Digitech RP 150 (Set just with Delay and Gentle Gate) and finally the HumDebugger.

I feel that this pedal minimizes pedal noise as well as 60 cycle hum. I have read concerns about tone alteration. Zero effect at the Normal Setting - a tiny bit on the Strong Setting..

On the strong setting It almost feels like a quiet compressor.

Very subjective but there you are. A note: The Digitech gate was engaged as an experiment. It does add another level of quiet and set very softly - doesn't breathe nor pump.. But the added noise reduction is modest.

Tonight I may stay up too late with my Tele.....

A Gig Saver, But Not For The Studio

This will reduce hum, but this is not purely transparent.

If your part of the performance is not front stage, then it will keep your hum from pushing you out where your not welcome. If your sound is central to the sound of the band, then you should be careful to make sure the coloration, where noticeable, fits with your sound. I would be very cautious about using this in the studio, if at all.

The fact that the A.C. adapter is required and that battery operation is not possible hints at the underlying technology. That adapter is used to collect a real-time hum sample to feed into a time-domain type circuit, where the hum is subtracted out of the desired signal. This makes this device completely unlike a noise gate, in that it removes hum regardless of signal level. That also means that its limitations are also unlike that of a noise gate.

The coloration, when it's noticeable, is somewhat reminiscent of a minimal electronic reverb or extremely short echo. Admittedly, there would be cases where such coloration might useful, but the time domain is fixed to that which can be used to cancel hum. The coloration is more noticeable in the "strong" mode. As with all effects, you'll need some time to experiment with your sound to see if it fits.

DeBugger

doesn't fully remove hum. You can hear a strange robot noise if you use it in high gain situations. Probably very rare that anyone would notice, but very noticeable in a recording situation.