How do I remove guitar hum?

A noise gate or surgical eq?

Two sources of noise:
 
1) Single-coils pick up induction noise from a poorly shielded amp
- Not much you can do except move away from the source.
 
2) Hum loop due to multiple devices in the chain, each with an electrical earth.
- Try a Behringer HD400 hum destroyer. I have several in my gig bag, they're cheap.

I had hired a player one time and he brought a single-coil in for the session and we recorded through a Pod.  I hate to be negative, but I tried everything to get rid of the buzz and hum and was not successful.  When the track was pumping, it was fine; but there were some places where the music would stop and hold a chord and he'd play a lick.  Those sections were not usable.  The sustained ending was also bad.
 
I ended up redoing it all myself with RealLPC and RealStrat through GuitarRig.   I liked what he played in places so I analyzed it as best I could and then made up other parts myself.  The good thing is that I am very obsessive so, even though he was a great guitarist, my parts were better in time.
 
Why am I saying all this?  Because I would like a good solution in case this ever happens again.
 
Craig, If you are reading this, I am talking about Track 3 (Redneck Lovin') from Trailer of Love.  It is my least favorite song on the album, but, oddly, one of the most popular—I guess because it is danceable.

I would try to fix it at the source. Since it happens with two different instruments you may need to chase down a ground loop in your gear. If you have fluorescent lights in your house try turning them off. Sometimes all you can do is find a sweet spot facing magnetic north and go with it.
 
Rocky

You might try using a direct box with a ground lift switch. Depending on the actual source of the hum, this can sometimes be helpful. If it's due to single coil pickups, you can try facing a different direction when playing. Turn your guitar up, but don't play anything. Listen to the hum as you slowly turn in a circle. You'll find that the hum is greatly reduced when you face a certain direction!

cuitlahac
Try this.......
 
http://forum.cakewalk.com/FindPost/3217993
 

I missed this reference but yeah... for those looking for a pretty good Cake oriented solution this actually does work in my noisy little setup.
 
If you don't have the old X2 R-Mix though it won't work as well but the Sonitus AC Hum removal setting does help quite a bit on it's own.
 
However on input one of the simplest things to do is move/swivel around the room with the headphones on and a high gain sim setting engaged and try to find the "quiet" spot in the room. By that I mean there will be specific areas in the room and if you face in the right direction in those areas you can get rid of a buttload of hum without doing anything special (aside from just being in that position).
 
It can be awkward because a lot of the time it's going to be a very specific position and not always a convenient one for mucking around on the computer but I try to find it and do my final tracks in it.
 
That makes it much easier to squash whatever hum/noise DOES come through in post via EQ filters/gating/noise reduction in the mixing stage.
 
Also many times you don't NEED as much distortion when recording as you might on stage... especially if you double your guitar tracks. Less distortion means less hum... so only use the absolute minum distortion and you can get rid of a ton of unnecessary racket while still getting some good screecher tones.
 
Cheers.

I agree that fixing the problem at the source is the best solution. Unfortunately, when recording electric guitar, it's sometimes very difficult to eliminate hum altogether. True enough, the guitarist should find the sitting angle that produces the minimum noise. But if you're using a high gain amp, that may not be enough, even with humbucking pickups. And many people (myself included) prefer the sound of a real amp to amp simulation plugins. There's all kinds of steps that can make it better, from insulating the pickup and control cavities of the guitar to being careful with your lighting and wiring and so on, but even at the best you're going to get some hum if you're using an amp turned up loud with enough gain to produce a really distorted signal.
 
Fortunately, most of the time when a high gain amp is being used, the guitar is playing so loud that the hum isn't noticeable, unless it's horrifically bad. The weak spots where the hum becomes audible will generally only be on notes and chords that are allowed to die out. And even on those, it's usually possible to keep the hum down with envelopes except at the end of the song or when there is a pause with nothing else playing.
 
This is where noise removal plug-ins can really help a lot. I used to use the one that comes with Sound Forge, now I use Izotope RX5 (which does a heck of a lot more as well). Of course, there are others. The important thing is to be sure to capture some of the hum on its own (no playing and no other sounds) to use as a noise footprint to tell the software what to remove. There are hum cancellation EQ settings as well that depend on sharply cutting at 60Hz and its multiples (or 50Hz in most of the world) but I find these less effective most of the time.