I have a Boss NS-2 noise suppressor - and I wonder can I use it like this, with the preamp section of my amp in the loop of the NS-2?



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I figure it should work - but I don't want to blow any thing up...

My effects loop is serial and buffered.

Expert opinions most appreciated...

Hi Jay,
Not quite sure what that complex setup is trying to achieve?

You can certainly put a noise gate in an amps' FX loop but in that case it would be "in from FX send. Out from NG to FX return" The guitar would go into the amp input as normal. Or the gate would simply be in the guitar>amp feed.

As to blowing things up? No, the energies involved are feeble, no danger to anything. That said, whenever you experiment (and DO experiment!) with audio kit, keep volume pots etc at minumum, do all the pluggeroonies with power off and advance pots slowly! Amp speaker feeds have enough energy to burn things up (or the amp itself!) so ONLY connect to an amps' speaker jacks that which the Book SAYS you can.

Note: Noise gates, like compressors are level sensitive devices so a pedal, designed for guitar levels, around neg 40dBV, will operate differently in an FX loop at neg10dBv levels or indeed the +4dBu found in the better (cough!) guitar amplifiers.

Dave.

Thanks Dave...

My knowledge of electronics is minimal, but intuitively, I think the NS-2 is designed such that, since the guitar plugs directly into it, it 'knows' exactly when a note is being played, rather than being fed by a noisy overdriven signal, and then having to differentiate between signal and noise.

The NS-2 then has its own 'loop', the 'send' going to an array of noise generating compressor / overdrive pedals, which then 'return' to the NS-2 again.

The NS-2 then 'outputs' to the front of the amp. This way it works very well indeed.

My question is whether I could treat the pre-amp section of an amplifier like I would an array of overdrive pedals i.e. place it in the loop of the NS-2. The output of the NS-2 would then go to the FX return - directly to the power amp section.

Regards
Jay

Yes Jay,
Essentially a noise gate is a switch that is "off" at all times unless a signal larger than a certain value is sensed when it turns on, usually very fast.

There is certainly no reason why you cannot regard a guitar pre amp section as a "pedal". Indeed, a lot more of the overdrive "tone" that peeps like from valve amps is generated in the pre and PI sections than is often realized. Belting the bejeesus out of the output stage is in fact fairly limiting. The only point to be aware of is the vastly different levels at input and FX out, pedals are normally configured as roughly unity gain devices.

Happy 'sperimentin'!

Dave.

I don't think you need to have the loop in the config you're trying. I think when I tried to tame a 5150 his in the studio it was basically fx send to NS2 input and NS2 output to fx return. Then it would be a matter of getting the right values. From what I've heard personally, this noise gate usually works better in front of the amp, I like the simplistic one knob Rocktron Hush better for fx loop.

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Thanks guys for your replies...

I did a bit of research - one of the nice things about the Boss NS2 is the fact that since the guitar connects directly into it, it allows the unit to know exactly when 'signal' is coming in.

Apparently there is an 'X-Connection' which looks like this:


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Regards
Jay

From that "X" connection it seems to me that the pedal has two noise gates in it but both are under the control of the guitar signal, or the absence of the guitar signal takes precedence?

I have a dim recollection of somethings called "adaptive logic gates" maybe these are employed here?

Dave.

No Dave, it's a gate key input, only one gate.... the Fx loop one .... the guitar signal is simply passed thru and used to key open the gate on the loop.


i have the NS50 (half rack stereo thing, but basically the same , key input>pass thru then stereo gate inputs and outputs.



(note, i could be wrong, the illustration above does imply that i might be.... but as i own and use the bigger version...... i figured there was a chance that the illustration is incorrect , or at least misleading, edit made to show the fallibility of even a dragon... )

Edited by Off duty BBQ lighter AKA Idris (30/12/11 10:58 PM)

That's Great Info, Helpful to Us.