Noise Gate Pedals: What's Your Poison?

[nikitasius]

Re: Noise Gate
Been using this for a whole lot of years and it has always been working fine:

Fame LEF-319 Noise Gate bei uns günstig einkaufen | Deutschland

Fame Noise Gate Kompakt Effektpedal mit Threshold-Regler sowie zwei Funktionsmodi Hard und Soft und True Bypass Footswitch.

www.musicstore.de

Absolutely no fuss, super simple but working. Very obviously, it's a gate that also comes from other companies (possibly Joyo, Donner, Harley Benton and whomever), they're all the same, just rebranded.
You can surely get much better gates (with trigger inputs, release controls and what not), but in case you don't have much noise issues, I always found this simple thing to just do the job.

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Re: Latency
I'm sort of quite a bit into that topic since decades already, and there's too many implications (some pretty astounding ones included) to cover them all right here. There's also no simple, universal truth about how which kinds of latency perceptions affect which persons, it's a pretty wild mixture of things.
But there's still a very simple and universal (yes!) truth about latency in general (not about the perception): Try to avoid it as much as you can. If you have the choice between a tool introducing latency and another tool not doing so, as long as they're playing on a similar level (or even if they don't but just "get the job done"), choose the one not introducing latency. As easy as that.

Btw you also use gt1000 ns1 & ns2?

 

[Sascha Franck]

Btw you also use gt1000 ns1 & ns2?

Now yes. But before I used that pedal.

 

[nikitasius]

Now yes. But before I used that pedal.

I mix them both:
• tc sentry to silent strings and remove the noise it can remove, but just to remove strings wizzwizz
• ns1 or ns2 with lite settings about 10 after the preamp to completely silent the audio

 

[Sascha Franck]

I mix them both:
• tc sentry to silent strings and remove the noise it can remove, but just to remove strings wizzwizz
• ns1 or ns2 with lite settings about 10 after the preamp to completely silent the audio

With my current setup, I actually pretty much don't have to use any noise gating. I have it active for all overdriven amp sounds but have the threshold turned *way* down in the global settings of the GTs.

 

[HotRats]

Not a noise gate but I've bought a passive mute pedal (JHS Mute Switch) I'll place in the amp loop path - probably between the board and the amp send - and will be used only during gigs for muting the amp between songs.

 

[James Freeman]

Occasionally I try to use a noise gate again but every time I do it sounds unnatural even with the most advanced noise gates in modelers.
I am used to the hiss of boosted amps that's part of the sound to me.

 

[FrankyFire]

Forgot to say it was the Sentry.

Weird that so many praise the TC Sentry, because...

I had issues with my sentry really killing the tone in 4cm. Like a huge drop of volume when engaged

The TonePrints were not able to produce better results.

I don't know if this was the reason why, but I noticed a huge tone suck and volume drop of about 5db when mine was engaged. I did a factory reset (bought used) and it didn't fix it. I've heard one or two others had a similar issue when using it in 4cm, which would occasionally resolve itself and then come back.

I bought mine brand new, always and only ever used with 4-Cable-Method.

The other NoiseGates I had over the years:

• Boss NS-2: Was too slow for me, playing Djent a lot. Good choice if that is not required.
• TC Sentry: Quick, but huge tone suck in 4CM in my case. Also weird to configure because with tone prints the functions of the knobs change and you have to run a USB cable to look into it.
• Horizon Devices: Always come bundled with their Drive pedals. They work great, but it's a bummer you have to add that drive pedal to the board. I have the Apex Preamp (does anyone want to have it by the way? - Selling it right now.) which is kinda big.
• KMA Pylon: Using it right pretty much since it came out. Best one I've used so far. I find the hard threshold too choppy, but in low mode this thing is clean, fast and only ever cuts what needs to be cut. Also the external controls are insanely useful! Would wish to be able to control the boost from the Ext-In though and/or have another footswitch.
• HX Stomp: Builtin works great, the Precision Drive model has another one builtin which works just as good. In my opinion all the software based ones are pretty great. I can just use any in Reaper and I'm good to go. The big issue is to find one in pedal format.
• Sonulab Stompstation: Works just as any other software based one.

 

[dronerstone]

2 months later, and the Ibanez PT Gate has held up well.

One of my more rational purchases of 2025, tbh.

 

[DrewJD82]

I snagged a Decimator G-String last month when trying to deal with all the hums/buzzes from my new pedalboard, which wasn’t a huge necessity once I got the VP4 on the board. I’m still using it, making the rig dead silent. I found it for $220 used, IIRR.

The whole 2 minutes I cranked the rig up when my neighbors were gone, with the G-String off the hiss is tolerable, just normal tube amp noise, but you’ll still hear that hiss over the delay trails. Turning the gate on I get a totally silent loop and the second the guitar is not outputting sound everything cleans up to pristine quality. Between that and the VP4 giving me my standard end-of-chain effects, jumping from either the amp/pedalboard rig to the Fractal direct is becoming more and more of a seamless swap. That kind of silence I’ve only experienced in the digital world.