Noise gate/s settings

My name is mud said:
Yes, 2 I understand, to have a hard gate effect for djent and other midi music (#troll), but … 3 ! 😅
The funny part is the “I am starting to feel a bit robbed of sustain” after putting 3 gates 🤣
Click to expand...
The number of gates is irrelevant with the right settings. If you don't have something helpful to offer go bother someone else.
 
Honken said:
People got different guitars and different environments.

I use two some times. This is for the most brutal choppy metal stuff when It needs to get dead silent fast. But I don't leave it on for other stuff. Often one gate is enough.

@jimmynorrisjr what kind of noise is happening? Could it be that you are near your computer or anything like that?
Click to expand...
At home, there is no noise. I can disable all noise gates. Out at some venues, it gets sketchy. I played an outdoor venue on Saturday that had a nasty ground loop or EMI of some sort. The venue had neon lights and TVs everywhere. This buzzing sound came through everything with speakers. I was able to minimize it or control it with the 3 gates, but at the cost of being cut short. I basically set each block to just the point of being bearable, but it had to be aggressive to deal with it. I am not trying to get a djenty gate, but may have ended up with one. I got through the gig, but it was not the best. This is why I am looking for settings that may help. I am by no means an expert with gates. I do have a furman pr-1800 and ar-1800, but they can only help so much. I know they helped because the other guitarist ran a 5150 III without any filtering and his rig was way out of control. I didn't even bother playing the Silver Sky because the noise was at least as loud as the guitar.
 
chris said:
If the noise is the same level as the guitar sound, a gate won’t do anything except cut both signals.
Click to expand...
This is what I was experiencing. I understand it was not the Axe-fx that was at fault, but a venue with nasty issues. I seem to be playing at several on the regular lately so I am just trying to get a better grasp of the noise gates.
 
jimmynorrisjr said:
This is what I was experiencing. I understand it was not the Axe-fx that was at fault, but a venue with nasty issues. I seem to be playing at several on the regular lately so I am just trying to get a better grasp of the noise gates.
Click to expand...
Yeah with noise that bad, the problem before the axe has to be solved. It’d be over with a regular amp too. Noise shouldn’t be that loud, then we add amp gain (real or modeled) and it increases the signal, which the noise is part of.

Trying different power outlets sometimes helps, but electricity is something I don’t fully understand and sometimes I just don’t have the answer. Typically it’s the venues responsibility to have clean power if they expect a performance with amplified sound of any sort.
 
jimmynorrisjr said:
At home, there is no noise. I can disable all noise gates. Out at some venues, it gets sketchy. I played an outdoor venue on Saturday that had a nasty ground loop or EMI of some sort. The venue had neon lights and TVs everywhere. This buzzing sound came through everything with speakers. I was able to minimize it or control it with the 3 gates, but at the cost of being cut short. I basically set each block to just the point of being bearable, but it had to be aggressive to deal with it. I am not trying to get a djenty gate, but may have ended up with one. I got through the gig, but it was not the best. This is why I am looking for settings that may help. I am by no means an expert with gates. I do have a furman pr-1800 and ar-1800, but they can only help so much. I know they helped because the other guitarist ran a 5150 III without any filtering and his rig was way out of control. I didn't even bother playing the Silver Sky because the noise was at least as loud as the guitar.
Click to expand...
This is so sad in so Manny ways. And I am afraid almost impossible to deal with. The only solution I got for this kind of extreme venue, is simply not playing there again. Sad but true.

Sounds to me that you did the most you could
 
jimmynorrisjr said:
a nasty ground loop or EMI
Click to expand...
These are two different types of noise that will add noise to the signal in different places.

EMI/RFI most commonly gets into the signal through the guitar pickups. You can tell if you’re picking up EMI/RFI by turning off all the gates and rolling down your guitar volume knob, unplugging the cable from the axefx input, or bypassing the input block. The fractal amps don’t add any noise of their own so after doing one of these any noise left in the signal is downstream, most commonly a ground loop. If the ground lift switch on the XLR outputs doesn’t fix it, you can try running 1/4” out into a DI.

Gates can only stop noise when you’re not playing; as soon as you start playing the gate opens and the noise gets through. This is why adding more gates or cranking the threshold is not fixing your issue.

So assuming you’ve dealt with any ground loops, the next step is to address the EMI/RFI. The most common ways to deal with this type of noise are 1) use humbuckers or any switch position that uses two single coils (tele middle, strat 2/4), 2) shield the guitar’s cavity with conductive adhesive copper tape or conductive paint, 3) install a dummy coil hum cancelling circuit like from ilitchelectronics.com (this is one of the reasons I went with a Suhr for my strat, it’s completely silent with standard strat pickups), 4) noiseless pickups.

You have to decide what’s best for you but I’ve had the best results with options 2 and 3 on my single coil guitars with no compromise on tone. I run Fractal’s input gate on a mild setting that doesn’t affect my sustain and just cuts the input if I’m not playing.
 
Last edited:
I generally keep the noise gate turned off because I don’t like how it affects the dynamics as the strings decay. I grew up with rolling the volume knob for swells which sounds bad with the gate on and instead rely on turning the volume knob off completely between songs.

Our house was built in the 30s and has adobe walls, so the wiring is ancient, noisy, and there’s no way we’re going to be rewiring or adding new outlets, so, yeah, even my humbucker guitars leak noise when the gain is turned up, but I’ve learned that my music room is noisier than the places I tend to play at, so I can live with the noise at home.
 
Greg Ferguson said:
I generally keep the noise gate turned off because I don’t like how it affects the dynamics as the strings decay. I grew up with rolling the volume knob for swells which sounds bad with the gate on and instead rely on turning the volume knob off completely between songs.

Our house was built in the 30s and has adobe walls, so the wiring is ancient, noisy, and there’s no way we’re going to be rewiring or adding new outlets, so, yeah, even my humbucker guitars leak noise when the gain is turned up, but I’ve learned that my music room is noisier than the places I tend to play at, so I can live with the noise at home.
Click to expand...
This!
I do play some heavy music with a lot of gain and I never use a gate at all.
But that manly depends on the guitar, my Music Man LIII with active circuit are dead silent.
 
While I agree that gating can have a bad effect on the tone, I use the tools I need to get the results I want. Some venues got a high noise floor and it's often simpler to use a gate rather than calling an electrician. Some venues/places are far away from ideal for sound, but sometimes there are live gigs in such places anyway.

There are things we as guitarists can do to battle this, but some things are beyond even our control. I use the gate offset when I need. I run through a Furman power conditioner, and I use humbuster cables for external gear. When these types of solutions don't work, I don't know what will. You can always mess around with the threshold of the gate, getting the guitar to shut up. But the noise will seep through when you start playing, and the level is above the threshold. Not as audible when playing metal. But can be excruciating with cleans and such.

And of course one can also add noiseless pickups.

If someone has any more tricks up their sleeves, I am all ears!!
 
I have different guitars than yours but I experienced squeals (not hum) sometimes. In particular with a Duesemberg Paloma and a Music Man Cutlass (all the pickups, including the humbucker at the bridge). Wax potting or re-wax potting may help.
If not change your pickups or stay far from your speakers/monitors
 
The think is, for what I have understood, that the noise gate in the axe just act like an open /close door, where some gates clean the frequencies where the noise is.

To show this, just do a palm mute and let it flow. You can Hear all the ground noise like it is without the noise gate .I owned a lot of gate pedals and some of them remove the noise even when you play, ISP stuff etc, because it concentrate only on the well known frequencies that does this buzz . The gate in the kemper use the same type of tech I think. Maybe all these techniques are protected by law/licensed don’t know .
 
My name is mud said:
The think is, for what I have understood, that the noise gate in the axe just act like an open /close door, where some gates clean the frequencies where the noise is.

To show this, just do a palm mute and let it flow. You can Hear all the ground noise like it is without the noise gate .I owned a lot of gate pedals and some of them remove the noise even when you play, ISP stuff etc, because it concentrate only on the well known frequencies that does this buzz . The gate in the kemper use the same type of tech I think. Maybe all these techniques are protected by law/licensed don’t know .
Click to expand...
The intelligent gate filters some noise, and the noise reducer type (input block) is specifically aimed at reducing noise while not acting like a traditional gate.

https://wiki.fractalaudio.com/wiki/index.php?title=Noise_gate
 
I've noticed more "white noise" creeping in on high gain stuff - like letting a palm mute ring out gives a WHHUUUUuuuuummmshhhhhSSSSHHHHH™ kind of thing. I don't know if it's firmware (I'm always up to date) or one of the many outside influences. I am religious about changing batteries for active pick-ups - cleans are super clean - no humming or electric sounding stuff.

What did help is cranking the instrument input to 100% to alter the noise floor. Maybe it now heavily pets the red instead of tickling it, but I haven't noticed a downside (clipping) yet.
 
lair said:
I've noticed more "white noise" creeping in on high gain stuff - like letting a palm mute ring out gives a WHHUUUUuuuuummmshhhhhSSSSHHHHH™ kind of thing. I don't know if it's firmware (I'm always up to date) or one of the many outside influences. I am religious about changing batteries for active pick-ups - cleans are super clean - no humming or electric sounding stuff.

What did help is cranking the instrument input to 100% to alter the noise floor. Maybe it now heavily pets the red instead of tickling it, but I haven't noticed a downside (clipping) yet.
Click to expand...
This is what I said before and this is not something new sadly. I end up live with it after trying all that I can. The gate in the axe is the only thing that I’m not 100% since I own it. Yes it works if you want silence between two staccato or a silence, but when you let ring a palm mute, like just palm muting one time the A string for example : while it ring you have all the parasites in the world with it
 
My name is mud said:
This is what I said before and this is not something new sadly. I end up live with it after trying all that I can. The gate in the axe is the only thing that I’m not 100% since I own it. Yes it works if you want silence between two staccato or a silence, but when you let ring a palm mute, like just palm muting one time the A string for example : while it ring you have all the parasites in the world with it
Click to expand...
I can clearly understand what you are talking about. I experience the very same thing and it bothers me. With my Diezel VHX, the noise gate works so much better to be honest. If you pick lightly, there is no noise, no artifacts, just tone (with gate enabled). With fractal gate, the lighter I pick, the more noise it’s bleeding through. I am talking here comparing vhx with fractal with same guitars, cab, cables etc. On vhx, the gain is set even higher than on fractal, but the noise is significantly higher on fractal and that’s strange, because as we know, fractal is not modeling the noise and there is no thermal noise, etc. but still, my tube amp has lot less noise while playing.
 
Last edited:
Thomas Obester said:
I can clearly understand what you are talking about. I experience the very same thing and it bothers me. With my Diezel VHX, the noise gate works so much better to be honest. If you pick lightly, there is no noise, no artifacts, just tone (with gate enabled). With fractal gate, the lighter I pick, the more noise it’s bleeding through. I am talking here comparing vhx with fractal with same guitars, cab, cables etc. On vhx, the gain is set even higher than on fractal, but the noise is significantly higher on fractal and that’s strange, because as we know, fractal is not modeling the noise and there is no thermal heat, etc. but still, my tube amp has lot less noise while playing.
Click to expand...
Yes. You just have to do a sound to « open the door » . Maybe we do something wrong? But I don’t know … you set the gate at the point you have no noise when you have your hands in the strings normally and that’s it ?! That’s not the first time I use a gate dont know …
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom