# Using two noise gates?



## GuitarsCanada (Dec 30, 2005)

I find myself with a second noise gate right now. Actually a Boss NS2. I already have an MXR noise gate on the board. Question is would the second one be of any use. I have the MXR right after distortion and before modularion/reverbs etc.

The only thing in front of the MXR right now is my wah and tuner. I run everything directly into the amp as it has no effects loop. The board will generate a fair amount of noise if distortion is engaged without the gate.

So if I wanted to add the boss where would the best location be? Or is it overkill.


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## cboutilier (Jan 12, 2016)

I can't see a benefit in using two gates, unless you had a massive board and wanted to gate separate sections of the board separately. I just keep my noisy pedals together (mainly my OD3 and CS3 now) and run them through the send-return loop of my NS2. I found it didn't work at all having it inline; it had to be a loop.


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## amagras (Apr 22, 2015)

It depends on what style you play. For example djent guitarists use 2 noise gates before and after the overdrive or distortion to be able to play those super tight rhythms.


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## GuitarsCanada (Dec 30, 2005)

cboutilier said:


> I can't see a benefit in using two gates, unless you had a massive board and wanted to gate separate sections of the board separately. I just keep my noisy pedals together (mainly my OD3 and CS3 now) and run them through the send-return loop of my NS2. I found it didn't work at all having it inline; it had to be a loop.


When you say you are looping them. Are you saying you run them in and right back to the NS2 and then from the NS2 to the rest of the board?


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## High/Deaf (Aug 19, 2009)

Overkill, IMO. Unless you have some unusually setup, as suggested in the above two posts.

But what would be useful is if you could use one noise gate to sense signal early in the chain but not gate - and use that 1st box to trigger the actual noise gate at the far end of the signal chain, after the noisy effects. Doubt that's easily do-able though.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

I've been an advocate of dual noise-control devices for a while now.

There are two basic sources of noise: what comes from the guitar itself, and that first length of cable, and what comes from the pedals on the way to the amp.

What comes from the guitar is primarily EMI and RFI, in the form of hum and radio stations. What comes from the pedals can contain hiss, ticks (from LFOs), and clock noise (from delays and similar), in addition to amplified versions of whatever came in on the first guitar cable.

The gist of the challenge is that cleaning up the signal before it hits the pedals tends to only address hum and RF, and does little about the cumulative hiss, while cleaning up the signal at the end of the pedal chain allows initial low-level hum and hiss to get boosted, making the burden on the gate to tell signal and noise apart from each other that much harder. The smaller the difference between the noise you don't want, and the signal you do want, the greater the likelihood that few settings of the threshold control will yield anything that successfully removes noise while allowing notes to gracefully decay.

The compromise is to use something like the NS-2, that senses the need for gating at the outset, before the relative differentiability of signal and noise gets too hard, but applies that gating further down the line.

To my mind (and YMMV) the ideal, then, is to have one gate with a fairly low turn-on threshold at the head of the pedal chain, to remove pickup hum and incidental RFI/EMI, and then another gate or expander at the end of the pedal chain, as the "clean-up" pedal. If you feed your overdrive a pristine signal, then when it amplifies by a factor of 200x, there is less hiss for the 2nd gate to remove. That means you can also set the threshold of that one pretty low, and provide a nicely nuanced output without any of the choppiness of more severe gating.

Given that you have the NS-2 and MXR unit at your disposal (and I gather the MXR does not have a loop like the NS-2), I would opt for sticking the MXR right at the start of your chain, where you can set a low threshold. The NS-2 would then be inserted immediately after your overdrives and modulation, with your delays inserted in the loop. The secondary gating action of the NS-2 as applied at the very end, but the sensing of any noise occurs immediately after the pedals most inclined to produce noise.

Does that make sense?

Of course, I say all of this having no idea of how big a challenge noise presents to you, within the context of your rig and needs. There are many circumstances where having just one is more than enough.


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## cboutilier (Jan 12, 2016)

GuitarsCanada said:


> When you say you are looping them. Are you saying you run them in and right back to the NS2 and then from the NS2 to the rest of the board?


Yup. It goes TU2 -> NS2 -> OD3 -> CS2 -> back to NS2 -> delay -> reverb -> amp.

I'll try and find a picture of the way it was set up. I took it off the board last week in favor of a big box Small Stone.


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## GuitarsCanada (Dec 30, 2005)

Im going to do some experimenting with these suggestions. Will publish the results for future reference


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## GuitarsCanada (Dec 30, 2005)

So I played around with my board for a bit last night. Moving things around and discovered that my fulltone OD creates a fair amount noise if used with anything else. Alone it appears fine. So I stuck the MXR right behind it then ran out to the other distortion pedals and then into the Boss NS2. From there out to the reverb and delay to amp. This configuration took the vast majority of noise out of the chain. So quieting that signal out of the OD helps a great deal on the Metal zone etc.

Granted you.may not need any OD engaged when using something like the metal zone which is very high gain. But I also have a big muff on there


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## cboutilier (Jan 12, 2016)

Your Fulltone might be drawing a lot of current and over drawing the power supply. My pedals get super noisy if I have to many engaged


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