Like your single coils, but NOT the hum ? Check this out:

Jay Ganz · Post by **Jay Ganz** » 29 Sep 2015 1:28 pm

Unlike conventional noise gates, you can tune this new one to affect ONLY the frequency you select
and leave the rest of your signal alone!

More Info HERE

Jon Light · Post by **Jon Light** » 29 Sep 2015 1:51 pm

Very interesting. I've long been an advocate of the E-H unit (with reservations) but it just has two settings.
This looks smart.

Bryan Daste · Post by **Bryan Daste** » 30 Sep 2015 12:32 am

Clever ideas. The loop through function is smart!

ajm · Post by **ajm** » 3 Oct 2015 7:15 am

Thanks for the new product alert.

The design looks intriguing, and *might* be a real help with SC pups. It looks like it may be similar to a Rockman Smart Gate, but with pots added instead of presets and switches. If so, I had high hopes for it, but personally was not impressed with the Rockman.

However, the linked demo video is totally worthless. It gives absolutely no idea or demonstration of how this thing works in an actual set up.

Most of these noise suppression devices seem to always be oriented to the metal/rock guys. They are really dealing with two completely different types of noise (aside from any playing, of course).

Pickup noise: Note that I said noise. Noise and hum are NOT the same thing. Aside from grounding issues or effects power supply issues, you are probably not dealing with hum. You are dealing with noise floating around in the air being picked up by the pickups. Typically associated with SC pups, HB pups can also pick it up as well, but usually to a much lesser degree. This pup noise is usually more of a "buzzing" than a hum. It is at a frequency that is higher than, and may be a multiple of, 60 Hz "hum". How to tell the difference? If you turn down your tone control and the problem lessens, it's not hum. Typical 60 Hz hum is below the range of the tone control and would remain more or less constant.

So, will this pedal help with this problem? We have no way of knowing. The video is all talk and background shredding, with no actual demo of the product.

Amp noise: This is the second type of noise. You can probably lump pedal noise into this as well, since the problem is not the guitar. It is usually present when using a lot of gain/distortion. It will probably be there even without a guitar plugged in. Putting a noise gate in front of the amp will not help with this problem (unless the noise is from a pedal in front of the amp). The gate needs to go in the effects loop of the amp. If your amp doesn't have an effects loop, you've got a problem.

So, will this pedal help with this problem? Once again, we have no way of knowing.

If you have a noisy guitar, and are running it into noisy pedals, or distortion pedals that are amplifying the guitar noise, and then running into a high gain overdriven amp, the problem is going to be unbearable.

Steel players for the most part play clean, and use traditional SC pups. Strats and Teles are also SC guitars. These pick up buzzing (NOT hum) from junk floating around in the air.

Would this pedal help? From the video, we have absolutely no clue. The only answer is to actually try one out.

IMO, eliminating noise at the guitar is the first place to start. Shielding (Strats and Teles) and replacing SC pups with HBs are the first place to start.

Do the newer noise cancelling SC pups sound exactly like SCs? Maybe, maybe not. IMO they can get very close. But they are much quieter. I'll make the sacrifice to quiet things down. IMO noise is not music, it's noise.

Donny Hinson · Post by **Donny Hinson** » 3 Oct 2015 8:25 am

I would agree, AJM. The demo they give, with all that thrashing/distorted heavy-metal crap, shows us nothing about this units acceptability for our uses. The problem is that when you try to filter out certain frequencies, any notes in and around those frequencies would also be filtered out or reduced, so the chances are that it might affect some of the musical sounds, and not just the noise.

Jay Ganz · Post by **Jay Ganz** » 4 Oct 2015 6:55 pm

The only way to really check this out is to try it.
Most all musical supply companies give 30-45 days to make an evaluation of whatever they sell.
You can theorize what it may or may not do...but it's just a guess until you actually plug into the thing.
This is a new product from TC Electronic. So....who's gonna try one?

Alan W. Black · Post by **Alan W. Black** » 4 Oct 2015 6:58 pm

Donny Hinson wrote:... The problem is that when you try to filter out certain frequencies, any notes in and around those frequencies would also be filtered out or reduced, so the chances are that it might affect some of the musical sounds, and not just the noise.

Don't forget though, that once the gate opens, all frequencies come thru. In a normal gate it cuts off everything below the threshold. Hopefully your playing is above the threshold. This gate seems to imply that below its threshold, it isn't muting everything - just a trouble spot that you choose yourself. If it works well, and it's a pretty good idea, you could dial out that buzz from the neon Coors sign which is so loud when you are not playing. When you start to play thru a normal noise gate, the attack of your first pluck is slightly cutoff. Not really a bit deal but it happens. And then when you fade out, your gate will shut off your last note when it drops below the threshold. This gate seems to let some signal thru all the time, even below the threshold. Your first pick would come thru, though there would (for a dozen milliseconds or so) be a heavy filtered sound to it. Unnoticeably brief. If the thing is any good. And when your last note trails off below the threshold, you wouldnt get an abrupt cutoff, just a cutoff of the Coors sign frequency. (Normal gates usually allow you plenty of release time so the cutoff on a trailing note isn't much of a problem). A gate that lets you keep some of your very first pluck, instead of muting all of the initial attack (due to the inherent attack delay), is a pretty cool idea. Big difference in a live environment? Doubtful, in my opinion. Maybe a dead quiet moment before a song that starts with a sharply plucked note on the steel. With a regular gate, the audio engineer back at the bar will think "his first note was gated off", and we don't want to disappoint him.

Donny Hinson · Post by **Donny Hinson** » 5 Oct 2015 5:30 am

My problems with serious hum was always "hum above the threshold". Pedal steelers are kinda different, in that we have a foot volume that is always in use, and that will kill most any noise when we're not playing. While gates may work well for straight guitar (with their typical lack of dynamics, caused by overdriving) they never solved my major problem with high hum situations. Hum always bothered me most when I was trying to sustain harmonics and lightly-picked stuff, and gates just don't lend themselves to reducing noise in those situations. At the end of a phrase, the hum would accompany the notes, and what resulted sounded more like a kazoo than a pedal steel.

Jay Ganz · Post by **Jay Ganz** » 5 Oct 2015 5:50 am

Oh yeah...I know what you mean. Hard to tell if this new pedal is a decent solution.
I'm sure someone will check it out one of these days.

Alan W. Black · Post by **Alan W. Black** » 6 Oct 2015 4:20 am

Right, bringing in quiet notes is a challenge for a gate. Wonder if this would work better before or after the vol pedal. Since the vol pedal is essentially lowering loud notes and boosting quiet or fading notes, the levels after it are more consistent. I'd try that with a gate I have but it's a bit crude. Says it has an input impedance of 1meg and an output impedance of 100ohms, should do very nicely as a buffer.
The bummer I see with it is that you have to preset your audio frequency selection by connecting it via usb to your pc. Probably a more complicated feature than they could do with a simple knob. Unless you happen to have one at home, that tosses my neon sign noise-fix idea out the window. Unless you gig with a laptop. Laptop computer, that is.

Jay Ganz · Post by **Jay Ganz** » 6 Oct 2015 4:56 am

I thought the exact same thing. Usually the hum you encounter is 60 or 120 cycle
...so you'd hafta create that somehow in order to adjust it out when hooked to your computer.

ajm · Post by **ajm** » 6 Oct 2015 6:28 am

If the "computer" happens to be your cell phone, then that's the answer. Your laptop can stay at home.

If you only have one frequency that is the noise, that's one thing. If it happens to be a particular frequency AND its harmonics, that is a whole nuther game.

If you watch at about 1:15 of the video there is a "screen shot" from a computer. As was mentioned in the video, the Sentry appears to be a multiband gate. If so, it appears that you can tweak parameters for more than one offending frequency.

However, thanks to the stellar demo, it's not clear. Note to gear manufacturers: When you put together a gear demo, make sure that the demo is for the product, and NOT for whomever is playing in the background.

My favorites are the demos for noiseless pickups. I know what "noiseful" pickups sound like. I want to hear the noise-less qualities. To do that, you need to a) stop talking and b) stop playing so that we can hear the background noise or lack of it.