Noise Gate, Noise Suppressor,

Started by Canucker, May 25, 2015, 12:20:10 AM

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Canucker

Whats your fave project for getting rid of excess noise? For Bass fuzz actually!

Mark Hammer

Why not just stick a back-to-back pair of diodes near the output of the fuzz, in series with the signal.  Once the signal drops below whatever the forward voltage of the diodes is, nothing gets to the output.

Of course, like any noise-gate, the challenge is striking a balance between eliminating noise, and losing the nose and tail of the note.

Since it IS a bass fuzz, you can also consider using a steep lowpass filter near the output.  F'rinstance, a trio of 3k3 in series, with 47nf to ground, after each resistor, gets you 18db/oct of treble cut at 1026hz, which ought to get rid of a lot of audio grime in the mids and highs, without losing too much output.  Ifthat was followed by a 100k volume pot, you'd hardly miss the overall signal loss.

DDD

#2
Shottky low-signal diodes work great there.
Too old to rock'n'roll, too young to die

Canucker

Thanks for the ideas guys! I always try to keep my start of thread posts short so people don't get bored reading them but sometimes I really should give more info....


The Bass fuzz thats squealing is a Zvex Wolly Mamoth (clone that I built obviously)......one thing that I did was box it up with a muff boost and they are both running off of the same battery or battery jack.....could that be a big contributor to the noise?

The bass being used is a Fender Pbass with both pickups turned up full...the set up really reacts differently with different amps....sometimes turning the eq on the pedal all the way to bass kills the feedback....and sometimes thats not even required.

I figured that its specifically a Bass Fuzz it shouldn't be causing this issue....as a result my bass player is thinking about getting a Noise Gate or other noise canceling pedals.

Mark Hammer

Anything with high gain is subject to two general sources of noisy output:

  • amplification of any noise at the input
  • internally generated noise stemming from layout issues

Sometimes, gating earlier in the signal path nicely alleviates problem #1, because it can be done gently.  Imposing gating after noise has been amplified places burden on the gate.

It's also the case that many overdrives, distortions, fuzzes, have more bandwidth at the top end than they really need.  One can afford to trim back on the top end, as a way of taming some forms of noise, without having to sacrifice the character that you're seeking from the pedal.

armdnrdy

You might try reworking the input/output wires using shielded wire with one end of the shield connected to ground.

I had similar problems some years back with two overdrives in the same box.
RG74U coax is just flexible enough to route inside of an enclosure
I just designed a new fuzz circuit! It almost sounds a little different than the last fifty fuzz circuits I designed! ;)