# Noise Gate for single coil hum



## troyhead (May 23, 2014)

I was frustrated with my single coil equipped guitars because of the excessive hum, so I was sticking with humbuckers for a while. But then something happened... I bought a Strymon Riverside and it includes a noise gate. Suddenly my single coils were not so annoying to play! It's a simple once-knob noise gate though, so I'm wondering if there is something better for that purpose.

I don't play high gain. I'm a low-to-medium-gain guy, just couple of overdrive pedals into a fairly clean amp. It seems most noise gates are geared towards metal players, which I am not. The noise I am left with when using humbuckers is very minimal, so shielding, iso-power supplies, better cables, etc. I have already taken care of and are not the answers I am looking for. I just want to get rid of the 60-cycle hum in a more efficient manner than riding the volume control on my guitar or standing at the correct angle in the room.

I did a bit of searching on the forum and found some info posted already, some suggesting to put the gate after noisy pedals, some suggesting to put it at the beginning of the chain (which was where I assumed it would go, apparently contrary to "normal" conventions), and some suggestions to get a pedal that uses the send/return loop to effectively do both. So for the guy who doesn't play metal but wants to enjoy his single coils, what is the best thing to do? 

I was looking at the TC Electronic Sentry and diving into the TonePrint settings seems to allow gating of certain frequencies, which seemed pretty cool. Would that work to narrow the gate to filter out just the hum, or is that not how it works? When playing loudly the hum doesn't bother me. But it would be really cool to be able to play quieter parts and not worry about the hum. Anyone have experience with this pedal?


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## Budda (May 29, 2007)

Sentry is a good bet.


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## DaddyDog (Apr 21, 2017)

I feel your pain. Single coil buzz drives me up the wall 

Beware that any noise gate is an "all or nothing" tool. It's off while you play, letting the signal through. It's on when the signal gets low (ie you're not playing), and cuts off the signal. You adjust when it cuts the signal. If you like sustain at the end of a tune, this will drive you bonkers.

The EHX Hum Debugger is a noise cancel tool. It must be powered by a 12V power adaptor. You may notice some loss of high end, but it works pretty darn well.

In the end, I chose to have hum cancelling pickups. I have a telecaster with Seymour Duncans. I had a tele with MJS Custom pickups, and still have a Gretsch with MJS as well.


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## Guest (Feb 21, 2019)

Noise Reduction


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

I guess this is where my annual noise-gate epic gets inserted.....

A great many noise gates these days provide a send/return loop. This allows the sensing to be done BEFORE your pedals apply any gain or other perversions to the signal, making it harder to tell noise apart from signal based on amplitude. And since the noise introduced when the guitar is first plugged into something is likely to come mostly from EMI (60-cycle hum), rather than hiss, the gate may well have a particular sensitivity to stuff in the low end rather than high end. Such gate pedals are simultaneously the first AND last thing in your signal path. The noise and signal are differentiated _*before*_ everything else, and the gating action is applied _*after*_ everything, or at least at the point where you want it to be applied.

The difficulty with sticking a gate later in the sequence is that every pedal - even the "good" ones - contributes at least a little bit of noise. And if the pedal applies any gain (and that could be as low as a simple doubling or tripling of gain, not the >200x gain of distortions), then it amplifies whatever it receives, including what's there when you stop playing, which could be hum and/or residual hiss. That makes it harder for the gate to tell the difference between signal and noise based on amplitude alone. "Smarter" noise-control pedals (which I assume will be digital) will attempt to use frequency-content to determine what the nature of the non-signal is, and apply whatever signal-reduction is appropriate to that. This could be aggressive filtering (e.g., momentarily removing deep low end, and/or high-end, depending on whether it senses EMI or hiss, until you start playing again).

One of the best compressors I had (sold it, but still have two chips left, so it will "ride again" at some point) used the SSM2166 chip ( https://www.analog.com/media/en/technical-documentation/data-sheets/SSM2166.pdf ). This is a fabulous chip, intended to be a sort of complete dynamics solution for a mic strip, and included downward expansion capabilities in addition to limiting and compression. The downward expansion is a sort of exaggeration of current level, rather than a switch-like gating action, such that if below the threshold setting, the circuit makes the sound even quieter than it currently is. As these graphs show, limiting and compression downplay increases to signal level, and downward expansion exaggerates decreases. Made for an exquisitely quiet compressor, that made everything after it quieter as well.


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## CathodeRay (Jan 12, 2018)

Zoom's ZNR does this well, more akin to 'downward expansion' than an on/off 'gate' threshold.


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## Guest (Feb 21, 2019)

Player99 said:


> Noise Reduction


This site sucks the way it adds an "s" the the http in any link. If the site is not https, then the link is broken, and or pictures do not load. Instead I get an error about site errors and security breaches. Then I manually edit the "s" out of the https address from the error page, and it loads. This has been going on for probably 2 year. It just seems like such a rooky website error... Can it not be fixed?

The link I shared is to the Rocktron site, and by no means is it malicious or spam.

http : // www.rocktron.com/noise-reduction.html

www.rocktron.com/noise-reduction.html


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## troyhead (May 23, 2014)

Player99 said:


> This site sucks the way it adds an "s" the the http in any link.


I got there anyway, thanks. 

It's kind of nerdy, but this is the field I work in. It's not a bug but a "feature". Just a poorly implemented feature. The idea is to make the web HTTPS (secure) by default. So if you type in a web address like www.yahoo.com without specifying http or https, the forum wants to make sure to send you to the secure version of the site. In general, every single web site by now should have a security certificate and proper redirects to handle this, but a lot of sites are not regularly maintained. It would be nice if the forum checked if the https version existed before adding the "s" to the link location though.


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## Guest (Feb 21, 2019)

troyhead said:


> I got there anyway, thanks.
> 
> It's kind of nerdy, but this is the field I work in. It's not a bug but a "feature". Just a poorly implemented feature. The idea is to make the web HTTPS (secure) by default. So if you type in a web address like www.yahoo.com without specifying http or https, the forum wants to make sure to send you to the secure version of the site. In general, every single web site by now should have a security certificate and proper redirects to handle this, but a lot of sites are not regularly maintained. It would be nice if the forum checked if the https version existed before adding the "s" to the link location though.


How many people come here and all the links and pictures are broken and they move on to sites that can post links and pictures?

I have the Rotron Guitar Silencer. It really changed my ability to use pedals in a really good way.


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## CathodeRay (Jan 12, 2018)

Player99 said:


> Rotron Guitar Silencer.


I know that was a typo but you have me in stitches.


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## Guest (Feb 21, 2019)

I'll leave it. Much cooler name. It belongs to an aircraft engine company.


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## knight_yyz (Mar 14, 2015)

Video is long, but there are suggestions to lower the noise, if that doesn;t work, they compare the Boss NS-2 and the TC Sentry. Personally I think the hum sounds better. The gate/supressors always rob some of the tone.


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## sulphur (Jun 2, 2011)

I use a WMD on the big board, it near the beginning of the chain going into the front of the amp.
It has the through jacks and send and return like a BOSS NS-2. Good unit with plenty to tweak.

With my band rig, I used a regular Decimator in the effects loop and that worked well quieting the whole rig down.
Dead simple one knob unit, but can be a bit finicky to get the sweet spot.

The Sentry sounds cool that you can tweak the perameters.


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## Dorian2 (Jun 9, 2015)

Just curious if someone has tried one in an FX Loop?


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## sulphur (Jun 2, 2011)

Dorian2 said:


> Just curious if someone has tried one in an FX Loop?


Yes, as stated in the post above yours.


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