to use the effects loop in a noise supressor pedal or not?

[mbengs1]

some noise gates of effects brands like boss and electro harmonix have an effects loop in them, what's the importance of this? why can't u just place the pedal after the gain adding pedals? why have a loop in the first place?

[WRGKMC]

Noise suppressors are nothing more than a soft gate. You can adjust the attack so the gate opens quickly or slowly, and you can adjust the gate decay/release so it claps down long or short depending on how long notes sustain.

 

The loop allows you to bypass the noise gate. They do make other gates which are in series with the signal without a loop. The problem you can have with them is based on signal gain/strength. The gate looks at the signals amplitude to turn the gate on and off. If you have the gate properly set for clean tone for example, then kick a noisy gain pedal on, the gate may not close completely or it may stay open longer because of the gain pedals increased gain and noise levels. Gain is a form of compression that sustains notes longer.

 

If you set the gate for a gain pedal then turn it off, the clean signal may wind up being clippy and choppy.

 

When you have the gain pedals in the gates loop, you can bypass the gain pedals and not have the other pedals affected by the gating. The whole idea being is you want to make your noisy pedals quiet, and not simply gate everything.

 

Either style can work OK depending on the pedals you use, how highly you have them gained compared to clean sound. If you use gain pedals to boost you volume then you have issues. The gate cant work at different volume levels and would require recalibrating your levels to operate properly.

[mbengs1]

I'm excited to have my noise supressor since i can't really hear the delay and reverb without it.

[WRGKMC]

I'm excited to have my noise supressor since i can't really hear the delay and reverb without it.

 

You misunderstand what the pedal does. The pedal is a gate which swings open when you play notes and closes to silence the sound when you stop playing. When you're playing all the noise you speak of will still be there. The pedal only gates background noise down when you stop playing.

 

That hiss you hear when you simply turn a high gain pedal on and aren't playing any notes can be silenced by the pedal. The second you play a note, and the gate opens all that noise will still be there as though the pedal isn't even connected.

 

You have some control over how quickly the gates open and close and how hard you have to hit the strings to get the gate to open, but adjusting it to open and close too quickly chops the notes off.

 

If you cant hear your delay and reverb, that's called masking which is caused by clutter. You aren't going to fix that with a noise suppressor/gate pedal. That clutter is likely being caused by oversaturation and the echo and reverb sustaining that saturation. The fix is to simply turn your gain levels down to reasonable levels and stop relying on gain as a crutch for a weak right hand.

 

If you need sustain, put a compressor before your gain pedal, then dial back the gain to reduce the clutter. Your notes will be more audible but you can still pick the notes as though you had it cranked up.

[mikesr1963]

With the Boss pedals, when you run the distortions into the front of the amp they can compress and you don't get the full range/power of the pedal. Running them in the noise gate pedal's loop is supposed to stop that. However, if you run more than 3 in the loop they sound like sizzle shat*.

[WRGKMC]

I have one and all the pedal does is act like a gate. Its nothing more then a Hush pedal with a bypass loop. Its either on or off. When the circuit gates open you get the full signal, noise and all. When its off, it silences the background noise.

 

It does not remove noise from the signal chain when the gate is open.

 

What can happen, is if you have so much gain that you no longer have any dynamics, the gate can fail to operate properly. There has to be a change in level for the gate to trigger. If your background hiss is so high because you've stacked so many pedals, you wont be able to get the gate to open and close properly.

 

The question is why on earth would you be running two or three gain pedals at the same time and why would you expect a gate to clean up that mess. You can stack pedals and gradually gain your signal up in a stepped process, but it makes no sense in running one highly gained signal into another. Once the signals turned into a square wave, there is nothing gained by banging your hear against a brick ceiling.

 

I will say this particular pedal needs to be run it on its own power supply, preferably a Boss Zero Hum adaptor. I got weird distortion effects running it on a Spot One and a generic adaptor. Boss pedals in general need clean DC because they are buffered pedals, not true bypass. The Spot one must have issues providing the proper current levels and generates a garbled signal. The pedal can also do some weird things if you gain the signal too far above unity.

 

I used it for two years before retiring the thing. My chain had become fairly long and my clean bypassed signal wasn't what I wanted it to be. That noise suppressor was sucking allot of tone and gain so I dumped using it and built a dual loop pedal instead. I put all my drive pedals in the two loops so I could bypass them all when needed. My dB level took a huge jump when doing this and it was like plugging directly into the amp with no pedals. I set up one loop for low gain pedals like Tube screamers, and the other with high gain pedals.

 

I now select one of each and have them set so any low gain pedal can drive a high gain to max saturation levels and essential have a 3 steps up in gain from mild, medium and maximum. I can switch between the low gains or high to get plenty of variety. If I need to silence the signal, I simply turn the loops off and can kill both simultaneously because I positioned the switches close enough together so I stomp both at the same time. I can also toggle between one or the other. if one is off and the other on, stomping both switches reverses states of both switches. If I only had a low gain pedal running, it switches over to the high gain when bot switches are pressed.

 

I find this is a better solution then using a gate. My pedal board is too extensive to expect a single gate to handle it all. That pedal isn't all its cracked up to being anyway. I have other gates that work far better if I chose to use them.