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Don't Forget the Noise Gate!


bluebirdrad
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My amp has been doing weird things. Little volume drops and surges. Maybe the power tubes need replacing? Finally I realized the preset I started with had the noise gate engaged, causing this mayhem. I cleared every other  effect to start from a blank slate and every preset came from that one. In the meantime I stupidly ordered new power tubes.  The noise gate is built into the input block. You can turn it off or adjust the settings so it doesn't interfere. (I edited this post after additional information provided by the experts. See the replies that follow for some great info on this).

Edited by bluebirdrad
To provide a more appropriate title.
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6 hours ago, bluebirdrad said:

My amp has been doing weird things. Little volume drops and surges. Maybe the power tubes need replacing? Finally I realized the preset I started with had the noise gate engaged, causing this mayhem. I cleared every other  effect to start from a blank slate and every preset came from that one. In the meantime I stupidly ordered new power tubes.  If you don't need the gate don't forget to turn it off.

 

You don't need to turn the noise gate off. Often just adjusting the threshold on the noise gate is sufficient. Too aggressive a setting and it will clamp down too early and kill your sustain. I assign the threshold as a snapshot parameter. On clean snapshots it is set to rarely or never kick in as there is little noise. Dirtier more distorted snapshots with more noise and gain get a more, but not overly, aggressive setting.

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1 hour ago, bluebirdrad said:

If you don't need the gate don't forget to turn it off.


If you set a noise gate correctly, then you can forget about it because it will only open at your desired level and gently close with your selected release time. When used as it should be, you would not know it was there. Although, with that said, it can also be used some highly creative ways, stuttering fx for example. 
 

Once more “HonestOpinion” beat me to the reply. Doh!

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45 minutes ago, HonestOpinion said:

 

You don't need to turn the noise gate off. Often just adjusting the threshold on the noise gate is sufficient. Too aggressive a setting and it will clamp down too early and kill your sustain. I assign the threshold as a snapshot parameter. On clean snapshots it is set to rarely or never kick in as there is little noise. Dirtier more distorted snapshots with more noise and gain get a more, but not too aggressive, setting.

Yes I didn't even look at the settings -- probably from some crazy high gain preset that I thought I had completely erased. I don't need the gate for my rig and style of playing. It was not knowing what was going on. The gate  is sort of hidden on the input bus and I didn't even realize it was there. It's a great feature if you need it that doesn't take up a block on the HX Stomp. I just posted this to make people aware. 

I should have titled the post "Don't Forget the Noise Gate!"

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5 hours ago, bluebirdrad said:

Yes I didn't even look at the settings -- probably from some crazy high gain preset that I thought I had completely erased. I don't need the gate for my rig and style of playing. It was not knowing what was going on. The gate  is sort of hidden on the input bus and I didn't even realize it was there. It's a great feature if you need it that doesn't take up a block on the HX Stomp. I just posted this to make people aware. 

I should have titled the post "Don't Forget the Noise Gate!"

 

Yup, it's a good head's up to new users. Haven't used any in a while but some of the factory presets had some pretty sensitive settings for the noise gate. I remember when I first got my Helix having to figure out what was throttling my sound. If you are unaware that the noise gate is on in the input block and also that Line6 may have designed it using parameters that are too sensitive it can be kicking in way before it should. Not something you are necessarily expecting on a factory preset although it provides a fine if somewhat dramatic example of a noise gate in action :-)

 

Btw, you can edit your topic's title by going to your initial/first post in the topic and hitting edit. Along with being able to edit your post you can also edit the topic title.

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