Gate Expander question. Rhythm/Lead settings

Ant Music

Fractal Fanatic
Ok I am trying to find out what you guys do for your gate settings between Rhythm tones and Lead tones. I am relatively happy with my gate settings for the Rhythm tones but sometimes I feel that when I'm playing leads my noise gate is choking out notes that I'd rather kept ringing. To combat this I started turning off the noise gate for leads but if I stop playing I'm inundated with instant feedback and noise until I switch back to rhythm (gate active).

Do you guys attenuate your gate settings between rhythm and (boosted) lead settings or how do you go about it? Thanks in advance. :)
 
Ok I am trying to find out what you guys do for your gate settings between Rhythm tones and Lead tones. I am relatively happy with my gate settings for the Rhythm tones but sometimes I feel that when I'm playing leads my noise gate is choking out notes that I'd rather kept ringing. To combat this I started turning off the noise gate for leads but if I stop playing I'm inundated with instant feedback and noise until I switch back to rhythm (gate active).

Do you guys attenuate your gate settings between rhythm and (boosted) lead settings or how do you go about it? Thanks in advance. :)

I either turn the gate off or at the very least, bring the threshold down just above the noise floor. That’s part of my sound check too- setting the gate for rhythm and lead.
 
I typically run two gates in my presets, the input gate and one gate block. I only use the gate block for rhythm tones and turn it off for clean/lead sounds. The input gate I set fairly conservative so that does a good job of cleaning everything out without choking the notes.
 
I turn my gate off on lead presets, but have the gate on/off switch easilly accessible, for the song that start out with a lead just in case.
And +1 for Pettymusic making gate threshold adjustment part of you sound check every time!
 
Are you sure you can’t live with a bit less gain?
Don’t worry I have dialed it back as much as I can and still have the tone I love.

My rhythm/lead tone is the PVH 6505 or whatever they call that one. Where I have noticed I’m getting a lot of noise is by having the bright switch engaged. It just doesn’t sound the same switched out.

I have experimented with trying to tweak it so I don’t need it on but it just sounds so much better on but hence the noise :(

I’m trying to find a way to work around it with the noise gate settings.
 
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I typically run two gates in my presets, the input gate and one gate block. I only use the gate block for rhythm tones and turn it off for clean/lead sounds. The input gate I set fairly conservative so that does a good job of cleaning everything out without choking the notes.
This is a great idea. I was toying around with this kind of an approach.

I was leaving the gate completely off for clean parts and only turning it on for crunch and rhythm parts. Maybe I’ll try your approach. Thanks for the tip.
 
The bright cap is directly linked to the bright switch. Try lowering the value a little bit to see if you can live with a touch less highs. Another thought, you can try a filter or eq block before the amp and just cut down certain freqs to find out which ones are causing feedback.
 
I run two gates myself depending on preset.

For higher gain lead tones along with other gain tones I want a more natural sound from, I just run a gentle gate in between the amp and cab to kill amp hiss. Check out ML’s old post about noise gate settings to see the general idea of how that one should be run.

For high gain rhythm, I then run a second gate in between my drive block and amp block that’s set considerably tighter (though both are set more gently than a single gate would need to be for said application, it balances the workload a bit). That gets me into super-tight start-stop territory and will keep even the most absurd levels of distortion from getting messy or out of control.
 
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Hmmm I tend to not require gating for clean tones at all because I’m pretty quick to mute the guitar with the volume knob when I stop playing.

Also which gate type are you guys using, modern or classic and why?

And what is your statergy for setting the timing of the gate and why?

The gate is such a vital part of the set up but I’ve never paid a huge amount of attention to it but now I wish I knew more about it.

Thanks for your suggestions guys.
 
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