Adding a Noise Gate

jwyles90

Well-known member
Hey all,

I've got a friend who is asking about building a specific pedal set-up for him, and I was curious to hear from everyone here if what he's asking is feasible. He's wanting a 2-in-1 pedal with a Tube Screamer stacking into a Rat, but with an added noise gate in there somewhere to try and cut down on some of the inevitable noise that thing will make.

The 2-in-1 part I have an understanding of, but I'm not really sure how to add a noise gate to something. I'm still in the "making pedals from a pre-existing PCB" stage of my comfortability and knowledge, so is adding a gate to an already made PCB doable? Or is that something that can really only be done if you're making your own circuit?
 
You'd basically be building a 3-in-1... a Tube Screamer, Rat, and Noise Gate. Ironically the noise gate will be the most complex of the three.

There are a few ways to accomplish this.

You can put the gate in front, this will kill noise going into the overdrive + distortion but won't do anything to help the noise floor of the overdrive + distortion.

You can put the gate after the overdrive + distortion, this will clamp down to near silence but since the gate will be hit with an already driven signal the response might not be ideal.

You can put the gate between the overdrive + distortion. This would be better than no gate, but probably not the best solution.

You can use a noise gate with a side chain input (the Muzzle, for example) to wrap the gate around the overdrive + distortion. The gate will be controlled by the clean input signal but the gating would occur after the overdrive + distortion. Although this is the more complicated solution it will also give the best performance / noise reduction.
 
You can use a noise gate with a side chain input (the Muzzle, for example) to wrap the gate around the overdrive + distortion. The gate will be controlled by the clean input signal but the gating would occur after the overdrive + distortion. Although this is the more complicated solution it will also give the best performance / noise reduction.
So where would the side chain input be hooked up inside the enclosure? I wasn't aware that side chaining inputs were even a thing, so I'm doing a bit of research on that as we speak. That sounds like the best option, I'm just trying to wrap my head around what that would look like from an enclosure standpoint and what gets wired where.
 
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