Expecting a Deci-mate mini noise gate pedal with the loop pigtail (g string?) this afternoon.
Does anyone have advice or "best practices" for integrating it with Mark VII head with an overdrive pedal out front?
Hi gearJunkie,
I've got the full-sized pedal version, haven't used it for a long time. I'll risk assuming that the mini version operates on the same principles as their other ones.
Please forgive me if you already understand the principle of the operation, but really all that happens is the guitar signal triggers the ISP gate section that is connected into the FX loop, to open or close (sidechain triggering in the old money).
Like any gate get these pretty much only mask hiss, and being 4-cable are pretty good at creating ground loop hum/squealing in the rig as soon as any gain comes on. If there's hum or noise in the system caused by bad power supplies, ground loops etc. this thing will potentially make it worse.
As for positioning, stick the muting bit in the amp loop - if you mute the loop, there isn't any hiss except what is inherent from the FX return onwards in your amp of choice.
But from there I went a different direction - I only to connected to the guitar input of the ISP pedal - I didn't use the ISP guitar output.
I used a buffered splitter right at the start of the effects chain, which had a transformer isolated out that connected to the ISP guitar input (think Y-cable, one side ground loop isolated though).
This acted as the trigger to open and close the gate when a guitar signal was present/not present. Also broke the ground loop between the ISP and the rest of the rig.
The signal pre-gain into the effects chain-to-amp input came out of the normal output of the buffer splitter. Which was good as the ISP sucked a bit of tone with its lowish 500k input impedance.
Hope this helps. Sorry for being convoluted, to get the best out of these things from experience isn't really in the manual.
