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Do you use a noise suppressor when stacking pedals? Looper?


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I've got to do some serious research, but lead tone consists of the following pedal stack:

 

Start -> Maxon OD808 + BB Preamp + Keeley Katana + DL4 -> Fender Twin 65 RI

 

If I leave all those on while not playing, a fairly noticable "shh" sound is present through my amp. I've never really thought about noise suppression, but I would like my tone to be pretty clean. But I also don't want to lose tone. I've heard good things about the ISP decimator, but I'm not sure how much it sucks your tone.

 

With that said, that would mean going from my normal clean setting of just the 808 on, I'd have to step on 4 pedals for my lead, and 4 off. really seems like I need a looper of some sort.

 

Do you all have much experience with a looper? I'd love to be able to trigger different combinations of my pedals for certain sounds, my only concern is selecting presets on my DL4 and etc.

 

So yeah...noise suppressors/loopers...any opinions?

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I'm using a Pedal Power 2 to power my pedals, and using Lava Solderless Cables for my patch. I'm also running a compressor for my leads, which heightens any noise that's already there. I think it's just an issue with too much gain- when I'm running just the 808 or BB pre, it's pretty quiet.

Edit: the compressor is a Keeley 4 knob compressor run at pretty standard settings- a moderate amount of compression.

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Noise suppressors fack with dynamics IME. Turn the pedals off when not playing = Cheapest and most effective way.

 

Your pedal search is not done if you need to step on 3 pedals for your lead sound.

 

All my opinion.

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Do you crank the gain way up on everything? I usually keep the gains medium-to-low, then I can stack a few without a big noise problem. The cumulative gain of 2 or 3 pedals together is pretty high. Also try cutting back on your guitar's volume.

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If you are concerned about the "shhh" noise between songs, why not just roll off the volume on the guitar once you finish a song? If you are concerned about the ambient noise while you play, I'm pretty sure no one will notice when the whole band is playing at stage volume? If you're concerned about the noise when recording, maybe just use one pedal per track. :idk:

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Sounds like you've got two different problems here. A looper of some description could sure help with the tap dancing, but you'd have to have a good think about what type of looper (how many loops, programmable or not, etc etc) would be most useful to do the job. For noise suppressors, I kinda think they sound like garbage unless you're playing high gain stop/starty stuff where you dont' want squeals in the bits where there should be silence. For lead tones they often mess with your sustain and decay. I'd just suck it up and turn some of the dirt off when you need to be quiet, as you won't hear the noise when you're actually playing anyway.

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Thanks for the opinions guys. I definitely have two separate issues- the looper and the noise are seperate issues.

 

Yeah the noise isn't really that bad- I.e. if i'm playing at stage volume, it's not a high pitched squel or anything. Hearing my amp hiss a bit however isn't the most settling of sounds.

 

I'll try rolling the gain back on the BB Pre (it's up pretty high). The shh noise only comes when I stack the BB pre with the 808 (which is a lovely combo, as both are transparent)

 

Yeah I suppose if I'm stacking so many pedals, it means my pedals aren't that great I guess..but I like how they stack personally. It gives me more versatility as I can interchange each pedal and have multiple sounds. Maybe I should have gone for one higher gain pedal instead of two mid gain pedals to stack, but it is what it is. I've fussed with distortion boxes in the past and never found one transparent enough that didn't completely muddy up my tone.

 

Do you all have any suggestions on good loopers to look at? I think 4 presets would probably be my minimum- the carl octoswitch looks great but extremely pricey. However it offers the ability to customize your chain.

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I've been eying the MusicomLab EFXII - seems pretty pricey but I was watching a video of someone using it- the midi functionality enabled him to switch between presets on his Eventide TimeFactor through his presets. I have no idea how I'd set that up, but the unit itself is smaller than the Carl martin and I've heard good things. I'll check out Rocktron and Moen- I also saw that there's a VoodooLabs pedal switcher, though I'd like to have more than 4 presets if possible.

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I had a crazy 2 boost/eq into 2 dirts as stack/cascade.
I used 2 anti noise pedals (1 was meant for the noisy P90) - and the other was strategically placed into an isolated dirt loop so I can pretty much go from liquid lead into nice unaffected clean with one stomp.


look around to get ideas, things get interesting with enough imagination...and $$$:lol:

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