Surprisingly Good "Utility pedals"

[motterpaul]

Two builds I just finished that really kind of wowed me:

The ROG Tonemender 3-band EQ - very subtle and a little tricky to dial in, but once you get it, it rocks. Combine with compressor for best results.

The "one-knob noise gate" - this is a fast and simple build and it frickin works great. Use the 1M pot for best results.  It is just a little slow in recovery, and it has a FET, so I wonder if having the ability to bias the FET (BS107) would improve the recovery.

[Frank_NH]

I'd like to try that noise gate with the ROG Thunderbird...

[ξεναγος νεκροπολης]

i've also tried the noisegate on breadboard! i agry with everything motterpaul wrote. i've used 2n7000. if you guys could impove that slow recovery, i would definitely build one.
Savvas

[Muadzin]

Maybe I did something wrong with my 1 knob Noisegate build but it only seems to reduce the amount of hiss with a teensy bit when I tried it.

My two Decimator builds on the other hand......

[motterpaul]

The noise gate is not supposed to kill hiss while you are playing. It is supposed to completely cut off ALL signal when you are not playing.  This gate works that way. You will hear hiss if you have it, until the gate turns off. This is a good thing in that you know it will not cut off any notes you play on purpose.

If you want to cut hiss there is a combination noise gate/filter which Alex just put up. I was going to build that but I decided to try the one-knob first because it is so simple. I was just surprised how well it works. But I think I will eventually try the bigger build also.

The build diagram says  " Use a 1M pot, but also try 25k and 50k." Those smaller ones did not work as gates for me - they just made it sputter, but when I went  to 1M the gate worked great. You can dial in the sweet spot where it turns off the signal (there is a good 500 ms delay before it turns off, I estimate), and it turns back on within about 20 ms of resuming playing.

That is the "recovery" period we are talking about - how fast it turns back on. A good gate should turn on in under 10 ms, so you don't even know it is there. This has just a slight delay - almost not worth mentioning (estimate 20 ms). It is workable, but it is similar to a FET circuit where the FET is not biased right and you hear a little delay in the sound coming on. This circuit also has a FET so I was wondering if biasing the FET would make it turn on a little faster.

For those who want to make it: Test it by plugging in a hissy pedal and put it after that. If you adjust the pot just right, start playing and then stop completely; it takes about 500 ms to turn on the gate (cut off the noise) when you stop playing. At that point if you lightly brush your guitar strings you hear nothing at all -  the circuit is off. But if you hit it at playing volume the gate turns off and the sound comes on again. I just wish it came on a hair faster, say under 10 ms.

[Travis]

The decimator is really nice.  Did you build it with sabro's layout?

[Muadzin]

@ Motterpaul, my build wasn't cutting off all signal when not playing, just a tiny bit when fully maxed when not playing. So I think it wasn't working right.

@ Travis, I was lucky, I got 4 boards from a guy off the Madbean forum who had done a limited production run. He couldn't really sell them for legal reasons so he was practically giving them away with other projects. The other projects didn't interest me much so I went for 4 decimator boards instead. I do love the actual Decimator pedal that I have, but it's friggin' huge. Even bigger then a Boss pedal. Now I got some Decimators in a 125B with topmounts, so less pedalboard footprint!

[motterpaul]

Right, I meant to say that you can dial in the "recovery" time (that it takes to turn back on) with the 1M pot. It sets the threshold, and if the threshold is set right the pedal turns on really fast, but it could still be a little faster.

But I understand you have the Decimator and that has always been known as a good pedal for controlling all kinds of noise.

[Synsound]

Add one more Hell Yes for that One Knob Noise Gate. Simple and effective.