MXR Noise Clamp - opinions?

[MogwaiBoy]

Anyone have any experience with these?

Looking to tame the insane hiss/hum of my much favoured HT-Dual in high gain for stop & go riffage - so would ideally like a noise gate with a built-in send/return effects loop to use with the HT-Dual only. Seems like the ISP Decimator G-String is the other main option, but MXR do great value for money and since I don't care for using it in the amp effects loop, the Noise Clamp looks like the ticket.

Yae or nae?

[Conway]

Boss NS-2 has NR loop. I have one and find it works very effectively for my setup.

[MogwaiBoy]

Ahh, cheers mang I didn't know that about the NS-2 : )

[Conway]

I plug gtr into the NS-2 then in the NR loop have compressor, wah, overdrive/distortion and fuzz. Out of NS-2 into modulation, delay and reverb. Then into amp. No hum or noise.

[Single coil]

May or may not help to get yourself a godlyke power supply too - Indirectly bought Rhett's one for a mate'a mine and he won't stop raving about how 90% of his hum has disappeared... And man, this was some seriously bad hum.

[Kiwiaxe]

Funnily enough I had to get rid of a Godlyke because it was creating hum!

I've had very average experiences with MXR's smart gate and Boss's NS2. I now use an ISP Decimator G-String and it is excellent. I don't know whether the Noise Clamp works more like the G-String than the Smart Gate did, if so then maybe it would be better than my past experiences with MXR, but the key to the G-string is that it tracks the signal coming from your guitar and then cuts off the loop signal when the guitar signal is below a certain threshold.

[MogwaiBoy]

The Noise Clamp acts in a similar way I think. It sounds like the noise clampin' only happens inside the send/return loop of the Noise Clamp itself with your dry signal being largely unaffected (buffered though I think) passing through. This is perfect for what I want to do which is isolate one single noisey pedal and leave the rest of the chain alone.

Re: Godlyke... nah I use a T-Rex Chameleon power supply for my board so I have no noise issues there - but the HT-Dual runs on it's own strange power supply (16V positive centre, 800mA?) but I'm quite happy to live with that slight inconvenience - and even the noise if I can't deal to it.

The strange thing about the HT Dual is that... as you back off your guitar volume, the hum/hiss decreases and goes near silent. it's also dramatically quieter on noiseless pups (Area T on the Tele) than regular single coil. I guess that's pretty normal for all overdrives though. But it seems like it's not an inherent noise issue in the pedal but in the way it interacts with the signal input - maybe an impedance thing? Our house has crazy light dimmers that cause alot of hum anyway :/

Blackstar recently switched to 22volts negative centre with their HT pedals, so I wonder if newer HT-Duals are quieter. Might have to email Blackstar about that... And might try the Noise Clamp too : )

[mitch.twentyfive]

i have a NS-2 you could try out man. and buy if you like.

it does suck abit of tone though, i found it quite noticeable.

[Johnwaynemetal]

I wouldn't bother with this gate for the money you pay for it. ISP is the way to go and I have used a mxr smartgate before. Most gates work off a range of hz and that determines when the gate opens and closes but the isp uses some trick circuitry,forgot what its called but it catches on quick, doesnt suck tone and works a treat. bear in mind I need this cause I use overdrive and other things on a 5150 but it will be effective in all setups.

[badmotor]

Keen to see how you get on, Mogwai. I've got heaps of noise in my recording setup - it's not just the Blackstar, but I have a tube DI box adding to it and possibly cheap power-supplies as well. Plus I just installed some high output pickups which has made things worse. Interested to see what helps an entire chain without sucking too much tone.

[Conway]

i have a NS-2 you could try out man. and buy if you like.

it does suck abit of tone though, i found it quite noticeable.

Quite a few people have talked about Boss NS-2 tone suck, so I tried mine the other night switching it on and off quite a few times with different levels of gain and I'm buggered if I can hear any tonal difference. But it certainly cuts the hum.

[Conway]

And I don't think the fact that I'm tone deaf has any bearing on the matter!

[MogwaiBoy]

Keen to see how you get on, Mogwai. I've got heaps of noise in my recording setup - it's not just the Blackstar, but I have a tube DI box adding to it and possibly cheap power-supplies as well. Plus I just installed some high output pickups which has made things worse. Interested to see what helps an entire chain without sucking too much tone.

Still liking your Blackstar? It rules hey : )

Actually i've put the Noise Clamp idea on the backburner for a later date. Tonefactor.com just had a 20% off everything sale too - so it would have been really cheap (about $100 NZ posted)... but i'm trying to stay the course for the Timeline. You know how it is

[MogwaiBoy]

Oh and I asked Mooer if they'll be doing a noisegate and they said yep soon! No built-in effects loop though, just straight input/output but still.. worth waiting to see if it's deece.

[badmotor]

Still enjoying the Dual. Good value for secondhand prices they are. I think I'm gonna chuck an ISP Decimator on the shopping list though.