Effects order...

[Brad1]

OK. One of the guitar players in my band went out and bought a Boss Compressor. (He bought it because it said "Compression/Sustainer").

He brought it to rehearsal and immediately completely mangled any kind of tone, and is generating TONS of obnoxious hiss.

His pedal order is Little Big Muff, Dunlop wha, Boss compressor, Boss OD. YIKES!!!!

"Can't you HEAR that, man? In the first place", I told him, "the distortion pedal is ALREADY compressing the signal, so you really don't need compression. In the second place, you've placed the compressor after the single most noisy pedal you own, and you are using the compressor WRONG! You should barely be able to tell a compressor is working, and you've got it set WAY too strong, wringing out any dynamics that might have been left, AND pumping up the noise...a LOT!"

I tried to get him to AT LEAST put the pedal first, and then learn how to work it properly.

"I want the SUSTAIN", he says. "That's why I BOUGHT it".

"For gawd sake", I said. "That Big Muff will already sustain for DAYS because you have it set too high! How much MORE sustain do you WANT?"

I wish I could compress his compressor under the rollers of a steamroller.

I then wrote him an 8-page "Guitar Effects Primer" explaining what each type of effect does, and the generally accepted order. I even put in what happens when you switch orders of, mainly, amplitude, distortion and filter effects. He comes into rehearsal and sets it up just like before.

I just happened to take along a Boss NF1 Noise Gate to try. I said "Well, if you INSIST on creating an annoying hiss level as loud as your signal level, at least try this, so we don't have to be assaulted by silent section massive hiss?"

So I set it up and adjusted it. "It's messing with my tone" he tells me.

SO! Anyone know where to find a DEFINITIVE well-written, easily understood explanation of proper AND improper compressor usage on guitar, and the problems it causes? If I can't get him to give it up, or at least use it more properly, I MAY have to try plugging in a reversed-polarity 24V power supply to see if I can blow the thing up while he's not looking. "I dunno, man. It quit working?"

Thanks,

Brad1

[Jag]

Sometimes you've just got to be blunt. Try saying something like, "Do you really not think that sounds like shit?!?!?".

Tell him to give his head a shake!

[Mark Hammer]

The reason why people hate noise gates is because they treat it like a magic device that will come in and clean up all their "noise sins". Unfortunately, when they do that they ask it to do too much. It becomes a bit like asking the military to carpet bomb a country to make sure there aren't any insurgents remaining to harass the population. I.E., the threshold ends up being set so high, in order to assure that the noise is eradicated, that barely any signal gets through.

The secret to successful use of noise elimination systems is to insert them where it is easiest to distinguish between signal and noise based on level. Often, that is earlier in the pedal chain than they thought. Of course, because many of our pedals generate noise on their own, it is entirely reasonable to think that a gate should be inserted at "the end" to do the overall cleanup. The trouble is because many of those hissy pedals are greatly amplifying noise produced at the start of the signal path, waiting until the end makes "transparent" use of a gate an impossibility.

So what do you do? Both. You stick one gate near the start, with a very low threshold to keep the basic noise out of the path. That won't mess with the attack and decay of your notes and let your compressor behave itself. Then you stick another one at the end to do just a little bit of leftover sonic sweeping, without having to shovel the input hiss that has been amplified 500 times by one's assorted hi-gain pedals.

I got myself one of these real cheap: Yamaha NR-100 Noise Reducer | DiscoFreq's Effects Database Since it's stereo, you can run the input to one channel, and then take the feed from the last pedal and run it through the other. While you don't get to set the threshold independently, a very modest setting should succeed in keeping the hiss at bay.

[Brad1]

Thanks guys,

I got him to give the pedal up. We spent the first 15 minutes of the last rehearsal swapping pedal positions, and listening to the noise, and he decided he really didn't need it "for sustain" after I said "now take it out of there, turn your Muff to where you use it, and then hit a note and hold it....". After 15 seconds of fuzz Muff sustain, it became obvious.

Now, if we can just teach him to set his Muff so it doesn't blast out twice as loud when he kicks it in.

And, don't suggest a compressor/limiter!

Brad1