Quiet Pedals (or quieting the pedal board)

[comfortstarr]

I have to keep volumes down when I record. Currently, I'm getting a little too much noise from my pedals. I've located the culprits (they're the usual suspects): EH holy grail & EH big muff pi. The Big Muff Pi is sometimes stone quiet, sometimes noisy. The holy grail always comes with a whine to it.

Who makes really quiet pedals? Especially distortion/fuzz. I love the holy grail reverb, but I can live with reverbs in this yahama mulit-effects pedal I have (allegedly they're the SPX90 verbs). One problem is I've been listening to a ton of Sigor Ros lately so I've been into stringing all the overdrive/distortion/reverbs together to get a crazy big swells, maybe I just need to kick that addiction.

Also, are there tricks to keeping multi-pedal strings quiet? I have an SBK board and it doesn't seem to matter whether I use it's loop or just go direct into the pedals. The pedals are all powered from the board, except for the Pi (I tested just batteries, again, no change).

Maybe the simplest solution is to just screw the neighbors and crank it when I have to.

[ThunderFaceWizardHead]

You could always try a noise gate pedal at the end of you effects chain. Never tried one myself, but this is what their made for. I know Boss and MXR both make one, and I imagine there are others out there.

[GooberNumber9]

If you want to add a noise gate to your pedalboard, check out the Rocktron Hush pedal. I have an old Rocktron rack unit and I couldn't believe it when I first set up the Hush on that. Somehow it just works better than a normal gate.

If you want to stop the noise at its source, well... You could go for more expensive stomp boxes, like Zvex, Fulltone, Analogman or Keeley. You could also try lowing your gain as low as possible. If you have a good amp, try getting more distortion from the amp. Also make sure you don't have tons of electronics or an electrical breaker box nearby. If you're recording to a computer, get as far away as possible and/or turn off the monitor after you've hit record.

For recording quiet, get a DMC Cab-Tone and a THD Hot Plate. Your amp will be totally silent and you basically DI the signal into your mic preamp. I think this actually sounds better than a 57 in front of the speaker and you can set your amp gain wherever you want.

Todd Wilcox

[UXB]

I demo'd a new pedal from Electro Harmonix at the NAMM show this summer. It was a noise reduction pedal, and it seemed pretty amazing. I had limited time with it, so I haven't had a chance to find any warts, so to speak. If memory serves, it was not a gate, but some type of hum cancelling device. It seemed really amazing.

Definitely worth investigation, if it fits your needs.

http://www.ehx.com/ehx2/Default.asp?q=f ... 5FDebugger

Best,
H