Using a noise gate with a noisy guitar

[DaddyDom]

Yup, that's pretty much it.

My GAS was cured in a beautiful way last year (temporarily, I'm sure) with a 1966 ES125TDC. I love P90s. Under certain circumstances and with certain pedals, it's noticably noisy unless I turn to the left (fashion!) or wherever.

So should I investigate some sort of little noise-gate pedal? I'm absolutely not going to be swapping out the pickups for P100s. LOL.

Is that the common fix for this kind of thing?
TIA,
DD

[Larry Mal]

In school they taught me that the best way to deal with noise is to not have it in the first place. That's been my philosophy ever since.

I don't like noise gates, they cut off signal and don't even deal with the noise, it's still there, smothering your sound. There's no thing you can do after the noise is there that doesn't have negative side effects.

I deal with that by shielding the fuck out of my guitars, and using noiseless pickups. I use- and very much recommend- Kinman pickups, but there are other makers of P90 type pickups that are noiseless.

[jorri]

I'd go for shielding the guitar, or checking the room first. Some room in my house just does that with everything i use in it due to electrics, and i've never found the source, so i just changed rooms. So what situation are you turning left? that would indicate some interference of some kind.

[DaddyDom]

In school they taught me that the best way to deal with noise is to not have it in the first place. That's been my philosophy ever since.

I don't like noise gates, they cut off signal and don't even deal with the noise, it's still there, smothering your sound. There's no thing you can do after the noise is there that doesn't have negative side effects.

I deal with that by shielding the fuck out of my guitars, and using noiseless pickups. I use- and very much recommend- Kinman pickups, but there are other makers of P90 type pickups that are noiseless.

Sure, when possible. Here, some noise seems to be inherent to a degree. When I'm playing, I don't care. It's inaudible and I'm louder than the noise.
Also:
"I'm absolutely not going to be swapping out the pickups"

[Larry Mal]

Sure, when possible. Here, some noise seems to be inherent to a degree. When I'm playing, I don't care. It's inaudible and I'm louder than the noise.
Also:
"I'm absolutely not going to be swapping out the pickups"

Hey, you said you weren't going to be swapping out the pickups for P100s.

[marqueemoon]

P100s are awful.

Volume pedal > noise gate.

I actually have a 1967 125-TDC. Great guitars. The other reason a volume pedal is good is feedback control. Or just click the tuner on when not playing.

I use a single P90 guitar live. At first the hum drove me nuts, but it can be easily filtered out with a plugin on recordings, and that’s the only place it actually matters.

[DaddyDom]

Sure, when possible. Here, some noise seems to be inherent to a degree. When I'm playing, I don't care. It's inaudible and I'm louder than the noise.
Also:
"I'm absolutely not going to be swapping out the pickups"

Hey, you said you weren't going to be swapping out the pickups for P100s.

Hahaa, you're right! I did. Sorry. Or anything else.

[ryanthellama]

Like others said, first try some shielding, check amp and pedal wiring (I once had crazy noise at home and discovered a power and an instrument cable were too close to each other), see if location makes a difference. But also I do definitely recommend a noise gate for anything you can’t take care of with those things and for live situations. The new Boss NS-1X is absolutely incredible, but you can’t go wrong with the old staple NS-2 either. There’s a venue I’ve played a number of times locally that has a chandelier right in front of the stage that makes single coils hum like crazy and both of those pedals have worked wonders.

[GilmourD]

I'm with the shielding crew. You can knock out a good deal of noise with good shielding. Basically you're creating a Faraday cage around the part that captures (not creates) the noise and shunts it to ground.

With Jazzmasters there's this guy on Etsy (and I think Reverb, now, too?) that sells machined aluminum covers. Some have said that it would attenuate some of the higher treble, but I kinda want to get a set and record a comparison in the same guitar with them and regular covers. He does black anodization and I imagine he makes P90 covers.

[Larry Mal]

That kind of guitar is hard to shield, I have an ES-330 that I did put some shielding in. I was able to get some copper tape in there, and I even went as far as having these old pot shields installed.

Well, three of them, anyway. The guitar is too shallow for all four pots to be covered.

So there is room for improvement there. But P90s are noisy pickups, that's all there is to it, that's why the hum bucker was invented in the first place.

[patski]

Like others said, first try some shielding, check amp and pedal wiring (I once had crazy noise at home and discovered a power and an instrument cable were too close to each other), see if location makes a difference. But also I do definitely recommend a noise gate for anything you can’t take care of with those things and for live situations. The new Boss NS-1X is absolutely incredible, but you can’t go wrong with the old staple NS-2 either. There’s a venue I’ve played a number of times locally that has a chandelier right in front of the stage that makes single coils hum like crazy and both of those pedals have worked wonders.

I don't mean to derail the thread, but ryan.....could you speak to the main differences between the NS-2 and the NS-1X? I'm considering either one as my next pedal purchase.

[ryanthellama]

I don't mean to derail the thread, but ryan.....could you speak to the main differences between the NS-2 and the NS-1X? I'm considering either one as my next pedal purchase.

They’re both great, but I find that my NS-1X can be set to much lower settings than my NS-2 and still reduce as much or more noise but with less loss of tone, decay, and sustain. Both are great, but definitely recommend the NS-1X if you can swing the extra bucks.

[patski]

I'm not feeling like swinging the extra bucks But I appreciate the input about the NS-1X! I will keep this in mind.

I'm picking up a used MIJ NS-2 in a day or two, as long as the seller keeps his word and holds it for me.

[øøøøøøø]

This is, I’m afraid, just one of those things. P90s sound great, but they’re noisy.

Turning the quietest direction is often the best solution for me. IZotope RX can help in recorded situations where the hum is enough to be distracting

Noise gates frustrate playing dynamics, and don’t remove the hum when above the threshold

Replacement pickups are not a good solution on a vintage guitar (the stacked humbucker types usually sound notably different)

Additional shielding is generally ineffective on Gibsons, whose harnesses are already shielded plenty well (braided shield on all internal runs)

Even where additional shielding is possible, it’s only impactful on capacitive coupling of hum—common shielding methods are completely invisible to EMI (magnetic interference), which requires high-permeability shielding like mu-metal and other exotics. Capacitive interference coupling will rarely extend down to 60Hz, so a lot of times it’s magnetic coupling we’re worried about (or sometimes capacitive coupling of high harmonics of noisy power hash)

Before slapping a bunch of copper tape in a nice vintage guitar, make sure you understand the physics of what you’re trying to accomplish. Most people don’t—they just take it on faith that shielding will work to improve the situation. But shielding involves very complex physics. It usually doesn’t work nearly as well as people assume it will, and I will gently suggest that it’s extremely rare that people empirically verify the perceived improvements of all their efforts

Single coils hum because of magnetic coupling. They’re inductors by design, which means they are very good at transmitting electricity (even hum) in the form of magnetism

Any capacitive properties are purely parasitic—they’re electromagnets on purpose; capacitors by accident.

In this sense, marginal/incremental improvements to capacitive interference are likely to literally disappear into the noise of these things doing what they were designed to do—exchange magnetism for electricity