Noise floor

[Orvillain]

Doesnt the GigRig stuff have trails support in their switchers? I guess that leaves the return from the pedal "open" but closes the send.... or something.

yeah it does, but it leaves the return signal open, and closes the end.... as you say. Which keeps the baseline noise-floor of whatever pedal is in the loop, as part of the whole rig. so yeah, not the solution.

I do like my GigRig G3 - but I wish I'd gotten the smaller one!!

 

[MirrorProfiles]

No idea what’s out there, but couldn’t an expander just gently lower things once the level hits a certain threshold?

 

[DrewJD82]

He's got form for that too. He did post a video where he complained about some Chinese pedal company cloning his design once.

I don't get why anyone would still give him money tbh. The guys pretty pathetic.

When I started playing Strats again a demo for one of his Dumble sounding pedals popped up, the Steel Stringer or something, and I REALLY liked the demo I heard and my thought went immediately to "I wonder if I can easily swap out the enclosure it if I buy one used"

 

[SillyOctpuss]

When I started playing Strats again a demo for one of his Dumble sounding pedals popped up, the Steel Stringer or something, and I REALLY liked the demo I heard and my thought went immediately to "I wonder if I can easily swap out the enclosure it if I buy one used"

I actually bought a vertex wah after the whole scandal broke. Someone local to me sold it for £25 because he was too embarrassed to keep it anymore. I stuck a few stickers on it and used it for ages.

 

[DrewJD82]

Here is a pretty epic board finished this week for a local client. The signal chain is as follows: FX Engineering Mirage Comp---Shin-ei Psychedelic Machine----Shin Clean Boost---Chase Tone Preamp----Way Huge Blue Hippo---PI-01 Buffer in/out-----XTS Tejas Boost----Custom interface insert S/R---Klon----XTS Iridium Fuzz----XTS Multi-Drive----Aura Brown Sugar---Aura Crunch Master---JHS Andy Timmons---Vol----West Co. Hippy Shake---Strymon Mobius----Strymon Vontante----Free The Tone FF-1Y-----Source Audio Ventris---PI-01.

Here is nice Keyboard/Guitar board finished this week for a local client. The signal chain is as follows: L.A.S.D. PI-01----EH Platform Comp---EH Overlord Drive----Boos EQ-200---Strymon Deco---Boss MD-500---Eventide Pitchfactor----Maris Polymoon---Strymon Timeline---Strymon Big Sky----PI-01.In the clip I running into a Blankenship Twinplex and Naylor SD-60 in stereo.

I'd try hittin' these guys up for some advice, Orvie. This is literally their bread and butter. While he's not running this into a high gain amp, I'd have to imagine the quality of their shit allows one to do so without a bunch of noise.

 

[Orvillain]

I'd try hittin' these guys up for some advice, Orvie. This is literally their bread and butter. While he's not running this into a high gain amp, I'd have to imagine the quality of their shit allows one to do so without a bunch of noise.

Honestly, I think it is just the nature of the beast. Ed is probably on the money with some sort of expander at the end of the chain. But overall.... digital pedals generate noise, even if nothing is plugged into them.


Thermal noise, quantization noise, clock jitter, etc etc.

By themselves, it probably isn't much of an issue. But when you go into distortion (pedals or amps tbh!) you're going to bring that minimal noise floor clearly into the audible realm.

I might try a Fortin Zuul in the effects loop of my amp perhaps. That might help.

 

[laxu]

I might try a Fortin Zuul in the effects loop of my amp perhaps. That might help.

Just FYI, if you happen to use the Mark V spring reverb, then that comes before the fx loop. So the gate could cut the trails of that out.

 

[Orvillain]

Just FYI, if you happen to use the Mark V spring reverb, then that comes before the fx loop. So the gate could cut the trails of that out.

I don't use it, but good to know!

 

[Ed DeGenaro]

So... as I've probably wittered on about quite a few times now, I run all my pedals into the front of the amp, with few exceptions. I prefer how modulations, delays, and reverbs, interact with the distortion channels on the amp. Even when the amp is clean, or set to edge of breakup, it sounds different than when using the effects loop. So this is a non-negotiable for me.

At the same time, since all my pedals are digital, I do get quite a high noise floor compared to most people's rigs. In the past I've tried various approaches to calm this down or otherwise nullify the noise; with varying degrees of success.

I've tried loopswitchers, which are obviously great for removing pedals that you are not using, from the signal path. But for pedals you are using, it obviously doesn't help much; and if you want to retain the trails/spillover of the pedal, then you end up leaving the 'return' signal wide open anyway, thus pretty much defeating the entire point of using the loopswitcher to solve this problem.

I've also tried noise-gates, to varying degrees of success too. The best experience I've had is using the built in gates on the Satriani JVM, which really does work well. You lose a tiny bit of the tail of your delay and reverb as they kick into effect, but nothing major. The worst experience I had was a Boss noise-gate. It just didn't sound transparent enough, and even added a small amount of its own noise.

This is one of the things that pushes me down the multi-effects route. Something like the Helix or Axe FX III, is definitely a lot quieter.

The Fractal VP4 by itself is quieter than a stack of Boss and MXR pedals as well. But honestly.... I'm very very fond of the tones I get our of my Boss RV-5....

Sooooo... what would you try next?????


I really wish someone would make a loopswitcher where each loop has its own programmable analog gate, so that you could dial in the noise-floor of each specific pedal, and set attack and release parameters to control when the signal is allowed to be routed through the pedal or not. Kinda surprised this doesn't exist.

Best results for “gating” stuff with digi boxes since I really hated the gates in the AxeFx was using a volume block assigned to an envelope controller as gate.
I have no idea if that’s possible with the VP4.