Another headscratcher - a boost that kills noise?

[mlabbee]

So I'm continuing to screw around with this little practice amp - it's now a two stage preamp and a single ended power stage with two triodes in parallel to boost the volume.  It sounds nice - tends to overdrive rather dramatically, though - not much in between sounds and not very responsive to the volume knob on the guitar.  And it's a bit noisy.

Still, it sounds good, so I decide to see how it sounds with effects and I try pluggin in my Brian May Treble Boost  - Holy Frijoles!  The noise floor drops dramatically and now it is incredibly responsive to the guitar volume - turn teh guitar down, nice glassy sound, clean and punch. Turn it up and it goes from grind all the way up to the sound of shredded drivers.  What the heck happened?  Why would a treble boost drop the noise?

[bwanasonic]

Sounds like The Miracle Of Impedance Matching. It's also why these devices (simple one or two stage boost/fuzz) were favored by some of the early *pioneers*. A strat with low output pickups thru a coiled guitar cable into a late 60's era amp was not necessarily a recipe for guitar knob sensitivity and subtle shades of OD. Throw the right rangemaster or fuzz face in there to act as a line driver and a whole new world opens up.

Kerry M

[mlabbee]

I was kind of figuring it had something to do with impedance, as the AMZ Mosfet booster set to buffer mode does the exact same thing.  I think I really need to sit down and figure out this whole impedance thing.

So that makes sense for the sensitivity of the amp to the guitar volume knob improving, but why does it kill the noise coming from the amp?  Treble booster off, hands off guitar - buzzing.  Treble booster on, hands off guitar, buzzing goes away.