Something that has been bugging me a lot in recent months is how all my guitars and all the related equipment have been making a lot of noise! When I run it through the auditorium main speakers and through the amps, I'm getting a lot of ground loop hums and low-frequency buzzes and feedback noises. It's a terrible shame, because in my opinion everything sounds really great, but when I'm not actually playing, all these noises become dramatically amplified because it's so annoying and it drones into you.
Here it goes. Meanwhile, I'll keep on the lookout for a Smartgate for my life.
And for the longest time too, Matthew has been bugging me just as much as the hums and buzzes have been bugging me! He keeps nagging to get me to change my power sources or to go do something about my guitar pick-ups. I'm powering my guitar pedals daisy-chain style, which may or may not be the cause of the hums haha I am quite adamant that a daisy-chain is more than sufficient and I don't need one of those expensive power bricks or isolated power sources. And of course, I know that there is a known issue with my acoustic guitar pick-up, simply because it is not grounded. I did try okay, I did go down to guitar shops and I read some online help articles to explore my options, but I didn't manage to get very far and I never got down to grounding any of my pick-ups or power sources or pedals. Don't know how to, and don't know any technicians that said they knew any solutions either.
Well okay I just bought a MXR Smartgate to deal with all these annoyances, Matthew included! So how this device works is that it functions as a volume limiter to eliminate unwanted noise. More than that, it is a gate because it allows my guitar signals to go through when I am playing, and it clamps up to disallow the hums and buzzes to NOT go through when I'm not playing. So there is this knob which allows me to establish the threshold level at which the gate will kick in, essentially allowing me to set the volumes at which the gate will allow my guitar signal to go through. Haha isn't it cool! I always thought that these noise suppressing pedals only come in the form of attenuation pedals, which just blanket cuts all noise (regardless of guitar signal or not) by 10 or 20 dB, or something like that. But a noise gate, and a "smart" one at that, is ingenious. And I have to say that it works pretty great for all my gear! It has various noise clipping options, but I found out that only the "high" option is useful in terms of noise reduction. Still, it is a marvel in terms of how all those annoying noises previously are now magically cut!
Normally when it comes to electronics, I'm not a person to go get another piece of equipment in order to solve a problem, if you get where I'm going with this. Like, if I have a shaky table, I will look into the carpentry of my table rather than go and buy a new table or go and get carpet or rugs for the table to sit on; or if I have a software issue with the webcam on my laptop, I won't go and buy a separate webcam just to solve the problem. I want to fix the problem by dealing with the source or the software, and not try to get another additional equipment to cover up the flaws. So for the longest time I stayed away from getting a noise suppression pedal precisely because of this reason, but it seems like this Smartgate is going to be indispensable. Still can't deal with the grounding problems in my pick-ups and power sources, but I like the idea that Smartgate is so smart.
And I desperately wish that there's some Smartgate for my life too! I want to be able to tune out all the garbage that I'm receiving from the world sometimes. Hahaha that would be great isn't it?? Imagine being able to tune out nasty criticisms and nonsensical feedback, and you only hear the good stuff. Okay this may be a bit self-centered. Or maybe I want to tune out the needless information that I read on the internet. I read a lot a lot a lot of articles and long essays and reports online, and half the time I wish that it came highlighted or something, so that I get the gist of the information in as little time as possible and don't have to plow through unnecessary junk. Just the other day I was reading this short write-up about how you don't have to read everything, which is rather ironic if you ask me because I have to first read this write-up before I can choose not to read everything! But hey, if there's a Smartgate for my life, all I have to do is to set it on a particular threshold, and it just filters the relevant stuff. Imperative tool for studying.
