noise suppressor/ compressor/ noise gate

I have a very high gain amp, I play very loud music. I have a little bit of feedback issues.

What have you guys found to be effective against feedback? ...Suppressor, compressor, noise gate?

What brands, what models?

Also, kind of unrelated, but what tube amps go well with a peavey 6505+ amp for heavy music. My rhythm guitarist is going to invest in a new amp and we don't know what will compliment my 6505+.

Boss NS2? I could do with investing in on myself, only a ***ty solid-state amp I've got but on high gain lots of feedback -.-

You will want a noise gate that will block some of the feedback until it reaches a certain level. I can't recommend brands cuz i play cheap crap. I've had some Boss stuff and always been happy with it and it held up well.

Another thing which causes feedback is if your pickups are facing the actual amp.

Hey Matt are your pick-ups potted? Some potted pickups may help but my guess is your high gain amp is just doing what it's supposed to do.

The compressor will give you more sustain but will not really cut out the noise from feed back. The compresser may even let the feedback ring longer. I'm not really sure what the suppressed is.

What's "potted"? I only play guitar, I know nothing about the craftsman ship of the instrument.

It's probably something to do with potentiometers. I agree with telecrater, a compressor may make the feedback worse as its job is to make quiet signals louder and loud signals quieter. Have you tried turning the volume knob on your guitar down?. As little as going from 10 to 9 could cut down on most of your problems, while still keeping your tone.

I personally use the noise gate built into my multi fx pedal (Digitech RP200a) and play with my volume rolled back a tiny bit.

potted would be a wax 'potting' (coating) on either the coiled wire or cable to help prevent (pretty much nullyfies) microphoning, aka hum.

I think..

wax potting is when you take a humbucker pickup and let it soak in bez wax or something else like plastic. them removing it from the wax and clean it up. this keeps the wire in place and removes some of that high gain screaming and feedback. I've herd of people doing it them selves but would not recommend it.

Ah, now I get it. Pretty interesting.

I've heard that the ISP Decimator is supposed to be a pretty good Noise Gate. From demos I have seen of it on the YouTube, it also doesn't suck your tone too badly (though w/ YouTube it's harder too tell, since the audio is usually compressed).

Also, have a look EHX Hum DeBugger and MXR Smart Gate.

Thanks for the suggestions, I have a friend who uses a mxr smart gate, maybe I'll borrow it and try it.

@telecrater: My pickups are not potted, that I know of haha. And taking them out and soaking them in wax and all of that is probably out of the question, I'd screw something up.

@JazzMaverick: No my pickups are very rarely facing my amp. On stage I'm always facing the crowd, and about 10 to 15 feet away from my amp.

@blackholesun: I have tried rolling down my volume, but in order to cut it out I have to go down about to 5, which diminishes the sound dramatically. I tried turning my gain knob down and my post volume up on my amp, which helped to an extent, but with the lower gain my amp sounds less appropriate for extreme metal and more appropriate for hard rock. I want to have that gain knob at about 7 or 8.

Also I have been looking into buying a Digitech RP series. Probably the 500, maybe the built in noise gate would help?

my RP150 has noise gate. it works good. i can have insane amount of gain and distortion without any feedback

Hey Matt, I was no implying that you should pot your pickups yourself, but when you consider replacing them, get some that are potted. I think you'll really like the results.

@BodomBeachTerror: Do you ever use your RP to record straight into the computer? That's another feature I was looking at the 500 for. If its easy enough and sounds alright it would make writing multi part songs much easier.

@telecrater: I understand what you're saying, but I really can't see me replacing my EMGs, if I can resolve this slight feedback issue and keep my EMGs then that's perfect, they really are perfect for the music I play.

im not sure mine can do that

I'm pretty sure the rp150 and up have USB capabilities. You should check into it. I thought the rp150 comes with a USB cable and software for recording into. Maybe I'm thinking of the 250.

it has a usb cable so you can do presets on the computer instead of fiddling with nobs, im not sure it can record tho.. if it can idk how

its the way to go!

So matt, did you test out your buddy's noisegate and what did you think? did it help?

I haven't gotten to try it yet, hopefully I'll get to this week sometime. I'm really starting to lean in the direction of the digitech rp500 though, It has a chromatic tuner, and a noise gate built in, and tons of different effects that I may or may not use, but it also sounds really good recorded straight into the computer, which would be really handy for writing songs and recording ideas. And at the place that I work I can do a straight up trade for it with my ibanez rg5ex1! I'll try the ns-2 first though