Thank you for the reply and advice. It's confirming my suspicions that a noise gate would be needed. Despite the fact that I've been gigging longer than most people on these forums have been alive my only experience with a noise gate has been when it's already been part of a signal chain someone else created. The whole no amp experience is fairly new to me though there's no way I'm going back to lugging my Twin or Marshall combo to gigs again not to mention that the gigs I do make them impractical anyway. Time to research the appropriate use of a noise gate.