How quiet is your setup with the II?

A

animal

Experienced
Just wondering how silent some of your setups are?

With some of the heavier patches I get some nasty noise/hum

Most are good quality LP's I am using ....with the guitar unplugged there is no noise
really like to be able to tame it
 
Noise gate.

Layout page - tab over to gate.

How to set it up is personal preference. I tend for a 5.0ms attack, release at stock setting (100ms) and set the threshold to about -85db or so to start, and bring up the ratio till the noise is gone. Then I play with balance between the ratio and the threshold until I find the best compromise.

Test it out with some single note sustain to test how it cuts in; the best advice I have is to find the right balance between the threshold and the ratio that sounds right to you.
 
Hey Scott

I do use the noise gate but sometimes the hum/noise still comes thru ....its almost colouring the sound in the low mids
I'm trying to think about what else I could do .....maybe I will post up a clip?
 
My hi gain patches are noisy as hell. Gating helps but has side effects such as knackering sustain. I'll try your suggestions Scott but I think I'll end up living with the noise.
FWIW my cleans have no noise at, just sweet sweet tone :)

Cheers.
 
Soma said:
Interesting you should mention that because I felt my tone was more... pure with the gate on. I thought it was my imagination but maybe not.

Cheers
Click to expand...

sorry I meant the noise itself not the gate! gate is awesome
 
noise from the pickups varies a lot. Many humbuckers are noisy, contrary to expectations, some are very quiet - depends on accuracy of windings and the physical structure overall.
Check your room: are you playing near fluorescent lights? Does it change a lot as you turn the guitar?

I quietened down an LP considerably by taping adhesive aluminium foil all round the sides of the control cavity (and making sure it was earthed) - the wires to the pots are not shielded remember!
I remember some passive hum-cancelling Single coils (Kinmans, Fender SCN) benefited from shielding the sides of the pickups by coating the inside of the holes in the wood around the pups too (i.e. not just shielding the back of the guitar)
 
I have the same problem here, noisy as hell on real hi gain patch (T808 OD + EURO UBER + 4x12 German Boutique) but completely quiet on clean patches. It was not that noisy on my Line6 PODxt. Since I'm mostly into extreme metal I'm really focusing on achieving a Hi gain patch I'm satisfied with. The sound on my hi gain patches is awesome but accompanied with lots of noise... way too much. I'm not putting too much drive on my "drive block" and my "amp block" I'm pretty sure (around 12 o'clock).

I'll have to try back my podxt but i'm pretty sure it was not as noisy and since the axe can't even compare to the podxt there must be a way to quiet that noise down to at least what I had on my podxt.

I have an LP with EMG81. I will try "Tone Control" idea of "taping adhesive aluminium foil all round the sides of the control cavity (and making sure it was earthed)". In fact noise changes a lot when I move around with my guitar so something is interacting with my pickups, I think. I tried turning off my router, cordless phone, child monitor, the fluorescent lights and it does not seem to influence the noise : when I move around with my guitar noise always changes a lot.

I suspect that part of the problem is coming from my guitar (pickup's wiring and jack) but since it was not that noisy on my podxt i can't only be my guitar.

I only have my axe 2 for about a week so I wish it's only my knowledge of the thing.

@Scott
As I understand it, the noise gate kills the noise when you are not playing but when you play it does not "filter" the noise. Am I right?

Maybe the filter block could help... maybe adjusting the input impedance could help.

Any ideas, comments are welcome.

In the mean time I will try the foil around the control cavity, filter block, input impedance and continue searching the forums
 
animal said:
sorry I meant the noise itself not the gate! gate is awesome
Click to expand...

Yes, the gate does seem very good. I meant when the gate is on the tone sounds better, like the noise is gone when I'm playing. But my understanding of a gate is that when you're playing it won't be blocking anything so the tone shouldn't be changing. I'm sure it's all in my head ;)

Cheers.
 
What would be way cool would be to implement something like the Waves Z-noise & X-noise from their Restoration suite. That way you could sample the noise & have it eliminated all the time, not just when you stop playing. You also wouldn't have to deal with the gate killing your sustain on hi-gain patches.
 
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Phi1ippe said:
@Scott
As I understand it, the noise gate kills the noise when you are not playing but when you play it does not "filter" the noise. Am I right?
Click to expand...

Right. Gate is open, no affect on your sound at all. Gate is closed, no noise at all. It does nothing while you are playing unless you have it set very aggressively to gate in pauses; something I do not do.

Noise/interference can come from any number of sources and shielding the guitar can help. EMG pickups are not noisy though; they are actually very good for high gain guys because of that.

You note that with the guitar unplugged, there is no noise. That means the source is your guitar (probably combined with environment factors in your playing area). Do you get the same noise if you move the entire rig to another room or building? Can you make a recording of it and share? (It would help trouble shoot it from afar).

wynsmth said:
What would be way cool would be to implement something like the Waves Z-noise & X-noise from their Restoration suite. That way you could sample the noise & have it eliminated all the time, not just when you stop playing. You also wouldn't have to deal with the gate killing your sustain on hi-gain patches.
Click to expand...

It is better to isolate the cause and rectify it rather than to just treat the symptom.

IMHO, YMMV.
 
Phi1ippe said:
I have an LP with EMG81. I will try "Tone Control" idea of "taping adhesive aluminium foil all round the sides of the control cavity (and making sure it was earthed)". In fact noise changes a lot when I move around with my guitar so something is interacting with my pickups, I think. I tried turning off my router, cordless phone, child monitor, the fluorescent lights and it does not seem to influence the noise : when I move around with my guitar noise always changes a lot.

I suspect that part of the problem is coming from my guitar (pickup's wiring and jack) but since it was not that noisy on my podxt i can't only be my guitar.

In the mean time I will try the foil around the control cavity, filter block, input impedance and continue searching the forums
Click to expand...

I taped the control cavity on my EMG LP and it made a small difference. The EMG pickups are still a little noisy though. To really eliminate noise, a modelled pickup is another option, which is not as dreadful as you might think - the modelled Humbucker in my VG strat works well with most Axefx OD patches

Remember the Axefx is digital, so will also kick out EMF noise to your pickups.
I found that when we started using compact fluorescent bulbs in the room below my studio, it caused huge extra hum on all pickups, that light bulb is closer to my guitar than the one above my head!
Try to point the pickups around to find the source

btw if you want to tape your cavity (sorry for the double meaning), try that self adhesive aluminium tape that is used to seal Kingspan blocks together, you can buy reels of it from Builders Merchants (Kingspan is the UK name for that thick hard insulation foam covered in aluminium, that you can stand on, modern buildings contain it under concrete floors and in walls, etc)
 
Scott Peterson said:
It is better to isolate the cause and rectify it rather than to just treat the symptom. IMHO, YMMV.
Click to expand...

That's fine at home or at a studio but most likely not possible at a gig. I don't have noise issues at home or at our studio with the Axe or my Triaxis but on some gigs it's been hellish because of the environment & there's not much you can do about it.
 
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@Scott and Tone control
Thanks for your support guys. I'll put a sample of the noise soon (when the kids are asleep...). And I will try what Tone Control suggests.
When I move around and get to a position were noise is maximum is the noise source in front of me (90 degree from my pickups)?
Also that "Waves Z-noise & X-noise" seems very interesting...
 
Scott Peterson said:
You note that with the guitar unplugged, there is no noise. That means the source is your guitar (probably combined with environment factors in your playing area).
Click to expand...

I have to ask a dumb question here. I too get that hum and it varies depending on the guitars. I get none with no guitar plugged in. I have also had the level of the noise/hum chage somewhat with various firmware updates. I know my issue is as you say a combo of environment and the guitars. So I ask, why would all the clean patches have absoultely none? Clear as can be. Simply put, I can have my strat with Fender SCN's just sitting in the stand and have the II on the Shiva clean patch. Silence. Switch it to the Shiva lead and buzzzzzzzzz. No movement of guitar or change in environment. My assumption was that it is normal...

I can clean that buzz up in input noise gate to were there is no hum while just sitting in the stand. Hit the strings and the its back. It really frustrated me. Oddly, I had a little beer fridge in the room and when i removed that it reduced the noise slightly. But again, I would say the level of the noise has reduced by half with the firmware updates. I noticed it improve with 3.0. I do live in a complex that has a lot of flouresent lights etc. Prior to the latter firmware updates I just avoided the higher gain amps as I am not all that into the high gain stuff anyways. Now it seems like its just a normal hum you get with a high gain amp and not so invasive.

Just my 2 cents.
 
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Tone Control said:
see
http://forum.fractalaudio.com/axe-fx-ii-wish-list/45771-noise-elimination.html

I've used such a tool before in Protools, I think it would probably damage the tone, it needs a lot of hand-tweaking to get noise reduction acceptable during the musical passages, it can easily sound like badly compressed cellphone
Click to expand...

I used the demo version of the Waves program back in 2004 to get rid of tape hiss & it worked great! The song was just guitar using a long, ambient reverb/chorus/delay patch & sax so the noise was very evident. I was also able to easily get a good, solid sample of the noise & it was very easy to get rid of the hiss & to negligibly affect the tone of the guitar & sax.
 
wynsmth said:
I used the demo version of the Waves program back in 2004 to get rid of tape hiss & it worked great! The song was just guitar using a long, ambient reverb/chorus/delay patch & sax so the noise was very evident. I was also able to easily get a good, solid sample of the noise & it was very easy to get rid of the hiss & to negligibly affect the tone of the guitar & sax.
Click to expand...

I found it easy with some tracks, hard with others. Not sure it could do it without tweaking
 
Yes, good to get rid of tape hiss for old recordings or interviews, but in my experience it always degraded "tone", even if you didn't remove all hiss to have a good compromise. It was good to clean up old video recordings to put on YouTube once.

The hiss may be different depending where you are, so it should get a "analyse now" foot controller button ;)
 
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