Noise gate for Preamp

[xCxHxRxIxSx]

Hello, I have recently been looking at adding a noise gate pedal (TC sentry) to my rig and I'm looking for feedback (the informative kind) as to whether a noise gate will serve it's purpose for me.

I am running humbucker les pauls into a Marshall valvestate amp (Tube preamp) and I experience the usual hi gain hiss and feedback that is expected with that. However I recently added a Keeley compressor plus to my pedalboard (which is fantastic btw) and as expected the compressor amplifies the preamp noise when used with hi gain. I would like to use the compressor as a set and forget pedal but the added noise on the hi gain channel is just too much. Also I use amp distortion 95% of the time and I get the same noise by plugging the guitar straight into the amp.

My amp unfortunately has a parallel effects loop so my questions are; will a noise gate pedal reduce my preamp noise? Would a noise gate make my compressor redundant and eliminate the sustain? Where in the pedal chain would the noise gate be most effective if at all? And lastly, would experimenting with different preamp tubes give me better results than a noise gate? (and yes preamp tubes do make a difference, I'm currently running a JJ ECC83 which has different characteristics than my EHX tube)

Pedal path: guitar > wha > compressor > distortion > pitch shift > looper > tuner > amp

Thanks in advance,

Chris

 

[chunktone]

a gate in front of the amp will help some, but you would really need one in the effects loop to make a huge difference. A serial loop would make it easier to deal with.

 

[xCxHxRxIxSx]

Thanks for the reply.

Any idea of just how much a gate would help in front of the amp? Would you say it's worth the investment?

 

[xCxHxRxIxSx]

For anyone who is interested, I picked up a TC Sentry at my local pawn shop for a great price and it does the trick. As expected it doesn't do much of anything to the preamp hiss in the parallel effects loop but completely eliminates all noise when put in front of the amp.

The Sentry also eliminates the added noise from my compressor even on high gain settings and with the noise gate dialed in I don't loose any sustain what so ever.

I'm running my pedals in series as I don't have enough cables to make use of the send/return loop function on the Sentry at the moment, but I don't see any immediate need for it as my other pedals don't add noise any to my rig and the only issue was the preamp noise.

Overall I'm quite satisfied with the addition of a noise gate, and with the Sentry there is no tone degradation and it only kicks in when I want it to. It might be worth mentioning that I am using the 3 band "hiss" function vs the traditional single band "gate" function and it does exactly what it says it does, gets rid of hiss and keeps your tone in tact.