Multi's, noise floor, front of valve amp (QC/Axe3/Stadium)

[DrewJD82]

Once you use the gates and boost/pad right?? Coz I wouldn't describe it as dead silent really.

I’ll dime my Plexi later and make a clip so you can NOT hear all the noise!

 

[EOengineer]

I had hella issues using 4cm with the OG Helix floor and HXFX. The HXFX would hiss uncontrollably with certain amps or gain structures, and both devices seemed to change the way the guitar was hitting the front of the amp no matter how attentive I was to levels and routing.

The majority of my effects go through the front of the amp so I lived with it for a couple years without 4CM. I think if I needed heavy post FX at this point I’d either proxy my amp’s preamp and run Stadium into the FX return, or just go full digital and grab a matrix amp.

 

[James Freeman]

One has to be extra aware of proper gain staging in high gain situations.

Most audio equipment like audio interfaces and modelers use opamps at the outputs which have some self noise, that amount of self noise boosted by 70dB via multiple gain stages is not going to be as quiet as absolute ground.
Personally I am not a fan of 4 cable method for this exact reason.

In my experience most noise suppression/gate pedals raise the noise floor when closed, which is why I don't like using them either with high gain.
BOSS pedals bypass topology use transistors and jfets which don't add as much noise when bypassed as opamps.
In my ever changing setup before high gain amps it is either one boost like an SD-1 or true bypass pedals for when I'm playing clean, I'm very aware of noise floor.

 

[Jarick]

I had hella issues using 4cm with the OG Helix floor and HXFX. The HXFX would hiss uncontrollably with certain amps or gain structures, and both devices seemed to change the way the guitar was hitting the front of the amp no matter how attentive I was to levels and routing.

The majority of my effects go through the front of the amp so I lived with it for a couple years without 4CM. I think if I needed heavy post FX at this point I’d either proxy my amp’s preamp and run Stadium into the FX return, or just go full digital and grab a matrix amp.

I also had issues with HXFX noise, even with noise gates those didn't impact the hiss going into the amp. And then I also had noise issues with Helix LT running 4CM with a Fender Bassbreaker amp but that may have been more on the amp than anything.