Noise gate pedal?

[Artus]

We're gonna record our new demo and produce it ourselves, but I asked myself should I use a noise gate pedal to get rid of unwanted sounds? We're using a Mesa Dual Rectifier with a Marshall 2X12" speaker.

[evhwanabe]

You could but you will most likely not like what it does to your tone. If you're recording and producing your selves I would suggest that you edit out all the unwanted noise, or use a software gate that comes included with most DAW's

If you are just recording a solo or something then just record the guitar during the solo section and then trim the ends....easy as that. Unless you are recording in a live situation, you shouldn't really be sitting there recording your guitar while not playing it allowing it to feedback or somehow make noise(like if the intro of your song is an acoustic guitar and then comes in with a distorted guitar on the 4th measure, don't sit there recording the distorted guitar for the 1st 4 measures, thats just a waste of tape or HDD space)

hope this answers your question.

[PushtoVent]

Hey man, I'm in the process of doing exactly what you're doing. We use the Boss NS-2 Noise Supressor Pedal, and it's awesome. You run it through your effects loop, and it not only cleans up your signal, but it doesn't really color your sound either because it listens to your guitar, and when it's playing something louder than the level you set, it allows your signal to run, but once it goes down, (also adjustable) it will let go of the signal and fade out. (Also Adjustable) leaving you with a nice, silence. Look into it, you might like it.

[Imaduck]

I've always been a fan of gates. When recording, I usually use the gate built-in on my JStation, or the one on my Lexicon effects. Both cut very little out of the sound, however, I set them very low so they pretty much just cut out faint line noise. Generally speaking, if what you're recording on has a good software gate that you can edit later, then I'd probably go with that. That way, if you decide later on that it's too sensitive or not sensitive enough, you can easily edit the effect without having to rerecord.

[Tadpui]

I can second the vote for the NS-2. Not only is it pretty transparent, but it also can power all of your other pedals with its daisy chain power supply. Pretty cool if you ask me. I've had mine for around 11 years and its still kicking.