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Section 9a
Noise Suppressor
The GT-3/5 Noise Suppressor
The setting for the NS on the GT-3/5 can be found under
<Master>.
The NS does not clamp down to 0. The Noise Check Patch
at full whack proves this. What is happening here is that the
NS has a minute leak, which will only be noticeable if you
run the GT-3/5 at full whack, and to do so will mean you
are clipping something terrible. If you are prepared to sound
that bad then why worry about noise!
The gate attack time is not variable. Testing the unit appears
to reveal that it appears to be very fast and well matched the
guitar. It is likely to be around 1ms.
Using the NS for problem solving:
To use the NS for noise reduction patch it in after all the
noisy effects. The usual place in the GT-3/5 chain is before
the FV (and thus before the DD/CE/RV which don't really
generate much noise).
Now to set it up.
First turn down the guitar volume. Turn the NS off. You
should hear some noise. Now turn the threshold to 0 and the
release time to 0. This ensures that when we raise the
threshold the noise disappears instantly. Turn on the NS and
there should be NO effect on the noise. Now slowly raise
the threshold. As soon as the NS cuts in and the noise
disappears—STOP. This is a basic NS threshold setting
without the pickups picking up(!) noise. This effectively is
the point where your 'system' noise has been masked. Now
turn up your guitar volume—the NS should open up
allowing noise to be heard again. This is because your
pickups have added more noise. If they don't, then create
some noise by touching the strings so it opens up. If it
immediately closes again you have found the right threshold
for your guitar as well! Many of us however, will have to
continue increasing the threshold until once again it clamps
down. This is the right setting for the current set-up.
Now, strike a chord. Keep increasing the release until you
get a natural decay, without choppiness. Once you have
found the correct setting with a chord, try again with a
single note on various strings and confirm the decay is
natural. Adjust as necessary.
Each patch has different effects in use and a different
amount of noise associated with it. Set up the NS on each
patch using the same method above. It will probably be
different in every case. Also, switching between different
pickups may require changing the NS settings.
© Copyright 2000-2002 Barry S. Pearce et al.
Using the NS as an effect
Now I'll bet you hadn't thought of exploiting the NS as an
effect eh? Well, although its use is limited it can add some
real punch to a patch.
Pick up a nice distortion patch. Make sure it has your
normal NS setting (or weaker!) on it. Now play a real short
blast of a chord—say up/down stroke in quick succession
and mute it as soon as the chord has been struck. Hmm. Bit
of body and string rumble eh? Would be nice to give it
more punch in and punch out eh?
OK here goes —set the NS threshold to 100 and the release
to 0. Now strike the chord in the same way again. Wow. It
gives it a real staccato, cutting edge effect with loads of
punch! I call it 'Chop'! :-) Bit of a difference eh?
I think this setting tends to work better with a hard edged
really crunchy distortion patch but feel free to experiment
with others!
*** Now that will make your friends
listen when you play! ***
A friend I know uses this on a Roland GP-16 and a Boss
VF-1. He says it's great for distinct chord chopping on a
Therapy? song that they play.
Whilst the GT-3 can use the the NS:Threshold and
NS:Release as control assign targets, the GT-5 cannot.
Therefore apologies to GT-5 owners but this next patch is
GT-3 users only.
Now for a nice little treat! Here is a patch called 'Metal
Chop'. This patch uses a JC-120 pre-amp and the Metal 1
distortion. One thing that can make all the difference to a
distortion patch is the *other* effects you add to it. I was
just looking through the quick settings (while I was
producing the overview above) and I came across a reverb
setting 'P8: AMBIENCE'. So I added it to the patch—I
think it sounds cool. You may have noticed the NS is set to
threshold=100 and release=0. However, what you probably
haven't noticed is that there are two control assigns—Assign
1 & 2. These are set-up for the SUB EXP PEDAL on the
GT-3, but feel free to change them to match your set-up.
What I needed was to drop off the 'chop' slightly so it didn't
stifle a single note lead line. So with the pedal forwards I
get full chop—with it right back I am given room to
breathe. You may feel you need to come back a bit more—
perhaps more on the release time than I have given it here.
So what do the assigns do? Well the first one changes the
threshold, so as you rock back on the pedal the threshold
reduces and as you rock forward it increases. The minimum
it goes down to is 80 so it is still quite a tight NS. The
second assign then does a similar thing but rather than the
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