Behringer NR300

The Behringer NR300, sold as the NOISE REDUCER NR300, is a noise gate pedal made by Behringer. It sits at the very cheap end of the market: Gearnews listed it at $21.70 in July 2026 and named it the best budget pick in its guide to noise gate pedals¹. A noise gate listens to your signal and mutes or reduces it when you stop playing, so hum, hiss and pedal noise do not come through between phrases.

Behringer pitches it at players who like single-coil pickups but not the 60-cycle hum that comes with them, saying the NR300 eliminates that hum while keeping the single-coil tone²³. The company also says the pedal "preserves the original attack and envelope, while leaving your playing and dynamics intact"⁴.

What it does and how it works

The NR300 is, in Behringer's words, "two pedals in one"²⁴. A mode switch selects between the two:

• Reduction mode: the pedal suppresses noise while you play, with the Threshold and Decay dials controlling how it behaves. Behringer says you can adjust these "to keep all your tone and dynamics intact, but effectively eliminate" noise⁴.
• Mute mode: the pedal acts as a mute, silencing the signal outright.

Two LEDs sit on the face of the pedal: one shows when the pedal is activated, the other shows when it is actively suppressing noise⁴.

The pedal also has a send/return loop, which Guitar World describes as adding flexibility⁵. With a loop, you can put your noisiest pedals inside it so the gate hears their noise and acts on it directly, rather than only gating what arrives at its input. Among the budget gates covered on this site, the Electro-Harmonix The Silencer and MXR Noise Clamp work the same way.

Where the circuit came from

The NR300 is a copy of an established design. Gearnews calls it "a very close approximation of a 1987 design"¹, and JHS Pedals, in its article on Behringer's pedal line, is more specific: the NR300 is based on the BOSS Noise Suppressor, with one of the knobs turned into a switch⁶. The pedal it approximates is the Boss NS-2 Noise Suppressor, which has long been the standard against which loop-based gates are measured. Behringer's version keeps the core circuit and the send/return loop but moves to a plastic enclosure to hit its price¹.

Power and bypass

The NR300 runs on a 9 V battery or Behringer's PSU-SB DC power supply, which is not included⁴. Guitar Player lists its power requirements as 9V DC at 30mA, plus the 9V battery option². The bypass is buffered rather than true bypass, per Guitar World's buyer's guide⁵.

What reviewers said

Published reviewers have been consistent about the NR300's place: effective for the money, but built to a price⁵¹.

Guitar World named it the best budget noise gate in its April 2026 buyer's guide and wrote that "Sound-wise, it's just as effective as noise gate pedals five times the price"⁵. The same guide flagged the build: the plastic enclosure is not particularly durable, fine for home use, and gigging players should look at something more sturdy⁵.

The same review found that, sound-wise, the NR300 is just as effective as noise gate pedals five times its $21.70 price¹. The trade-off is build: the plastic enclosure is not particularly durable, which the reviewer judged fine for home use, while advising gigging players to look at something more durable¹. That fits the pedal's positioning as a very close approximation of a 1987 design sold at a budget price¹.

Guitar Player's guide, updated in November 2025, called the NR300 "a great way of getting started without spending loads" and listed its controls as Threshold and Decay with both mute and reduction modes².

How it compares

The NR300's point of comparison is the 1987 design its circuit closely approximates¹. What it offers at $21.70 is that circuit's approach to noise reduction, including the elimination of 60-cycle hum from single-coil pickups while keeping single-coil tone, in a plastic enclosure rather than a more durable one¹³. A reviewer found it just as effective as noise gate pedals five times the price sonically, with the enclosure being the compromise: fine for home use, less so for gigging⁵.

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