Noise Gate Pedals

A noise gate pedal is the one pedal on your board that takes something away instead of adding something. As GUP Tech puts it, a gate is not adding a new effect to your setup, it removes something unwanted: noise¹. When you stop playing, the gate mutes the signal, and the hiss, hum and buzz of a high gain amp, a chain of drive pedals or a noisy power supply disappears with it. When you play a note, the gate opens and lets your signal through.

That is the whole idea, and it is why gates sit close to distortion, fuzz and boost pedals in most rigs. MXR describes its Smart Gate as able to "tame your hissing high-gain amp or silence your string of stompboxes"², and GUP Tech names the players who benefit most: heavy high gain players, players with noisy boost, distortion or fuzz pedals, players with bad or unstable electricity at home, and performers whose venue power may be unclean¹.

What a noise gate does

A gate listens to the level of your signal and makes a simple decision: anything louder than a set threshold passes, anything quieter is muted. The effect on your sound is silence where there used to be noise. Azor describes its The Noise pedal as one that "can reduce the noise form input signal and keep the quality of your original signal"³, and that is the goal of every gate on this page: your playing comes through unchanged, the noise between phrases does not.

What a gate will not do is remove noise while you are playing. Because the gate opens whenever your signal is above the threshold, hum and hiss that ride along with your notes still come through. For hum that is present during playing, different tools exist, covered below under hum eliminators.

Gates also appear built into other pedals rather than as standalone boxes. ENGL's EP635 Fireball IR Pedal includes what the maker calls an advanced noise gate "for eliminating unwanted noise at high-gain settings"⁴, and the MXR EVH Modern High Gain Pedal carries a Noise Gate control that "reins your signal in for maximum clarity at cranked output and gain levels"⁵.

How a noise gate works

The core of every gate is a threshold. Mosky's Noise Gate makes this explicit: "A single Gate(Trigger) knob allows you to set the volume threshold at which the pedal is active"⁶. Set the threshold just above your rig's noise floor and the gate stays closed on hiss but opens instantly on a picked note.

Two things follow from that for a player:

• Threshold height trades noise for sustain. A low threshold lets quiet notes and natural decay through but may let some hiss leak. A high threshold kills every trace of noise but can choke the tail of a sustained note.
• The gate reacts to level, not to content. It cannot tell your playing from noise except by loudness, which is why placement and detection wiring matter so much, as covered below.

Some pedals use gating as a creative control rather than a cleanup tool. Parasit Studio's C19 Databus Drive has a Gate knob that "controls how noisy and touch sensitive the pedal is, from making noise on it's own to gated and quiet"⁷, and the ZVex Fuzz Factory's Gate control "squelches noise after end of sustain" and can be used "to tune in the exact feedback pitch"⁸. In fuzz circuits, a hard gate can chop notes into staccato chunks, which some players use deliberately.

Gates, suppressors and hum eliminators

These three terms get used loosely, but they describe different approaches to noise.

A noise gate pedal does not add a new effect to your setup; it removes something unwanted: noise¹. The family is broader than gates alone. The NUX Huminator is a noise gate pedal built to eliminate unwanted noise such as hum, buzz and pedalboard interference, and Rocktron's HUSH The Pedal puts noise reduction circuitry on the floor to wipe out hiss, pickup buzz and unwanted feedback. Hum eliminators take another route entirely: D'Addario's XPND Pedal Power System includes a Noise Isolator that uses galvanic isolation to remove hum from problem pedals⁹.

A noise suppressor reduces noise more gradually instead of cutting it dead, which tends to sound more natural on decaying notes. Boss's own noise pedals, the NS-2 and the NS-1X, are suppressors. A hum eliminator targets a specific problem: mains hum, either 60 cycle hum from single coil pickups or hum carried through power. Behringer's NR300 is aimed squarely at players who "love the bite, twang and snap of single-coil pickups, but can't stand the 60-cycle hum that comes along for the ride"¹⁰. And some noise problems are power problems: D'Addario's XPND Pedal Power System includes a Noise Isolator whose "galvanic isolation removes hum from problem pedals"⁹, fixing hum at the supply rather than gating it.

The boundaries are blurry in practice. Rocktron calls its HUSH The Pedal a noise reduction pedal that lets you "wipe out hiss, pickup buzz and unwanted feedback"¹¹. NUX describes the Huminator as "engineered to tackle noise issues, from hum and buzz to pedalboard interference"¹². ISP's Decimator II is sold as a noise gate that "ups the ante over the original Decimator design to give you even better noise" reduction¹³. Reading a maker's own description of how the pedal reacts, hard cut or gradual reduction, tells you more than the label on the box.

The usual controls

Simple gates have one knob. Larger ones add controls for how the gate behaves as it opens and closes.

Controls across the category follow a pattern: a threshold that sets where the gate engages. Electro-Harmonix's Battalion has a Gate knob that sets the threshold for the noise gate, and Stone Deaf's Noise Reaper has a Threshold knob that sets the level at which the gate engages, comparing the input sensitivity of the instrument input against the noisy signal source¹⁴. Some drive pedals build the gate in and give it its own control: Amptweaker's Bass TightDrive Jr has a manually adjustable noise gate that can be cranked to stop notes hard and fast, affects only the distorted tone, and automatically goes away when the pedal is bypassed, while the C19 Databus Drive's Gate knob runs from making noise on its own to gated and quiet¹⁴.

Where a noise gate goes in the signal chain

Placement is where gates get interesting, because a gate can only silence noise that passes through it, and it can only track a signal it can hear.

After your gain pedals. Signal chain guidance is direct: the drive section is "also the logical place for a noise gate like the NS-2 to control the unruly pedalboard section"¹⁵. That is where noisy gain pedals gather, and noise gate pedals are most useful to players of heavy high gain music and players with noisy boost, distortion or fuzz pedals. Some gates go further than placement alone: TC Electronic's Sentry adds a loop Send/Return for silencing noisy pedals and amps, all without cutting out dynamics or feel¹⁶.

The four cable method. Gates with extra jacks let you separate detection from gating. GUP Tech's SUN Noise Gate includes 4 jacks to wire the pedal in a 2, 3 or 4 wire method: the right side jack is the Detection Input and the top right jack is the actual gate input¹⁷. GUP Tech's MWAC Noise Gate takes a similar approach to layout, with Guitar In/Thru on the right side of the pedal and gate return jacks on top, so the clean guitar signal and the noisy pedal chain can be handled separately¹⁸.

Several pedals are built for exactly this wiring. GUP Tech's SUN Noise Gate "includes 4 jacks to wire the pedal in 2, 3 or 4-wire method," with the right side jack as the detection input and the top right jack as the actual gate input¹⁷. The TDS Sun Noise Gate uses the same 2, 3 or 4 wire wiring²⁰. The MWAC puts Guitar In and Thru on the right side of the pedal with gate return jacks on top, and GUP Tech's own placement advice is to wire those "as soon as possible in your signal chain, after your tuner," then "come back for the gate (Top jacks) as late as possible," in the FX loop or just before the amp¹⁸. NUX's Huminator likewise "features an integrated effects loop for isolating noisy pedals"²¹.

A note on buffers. GUP Tech adds that a buffered signal into the gate's detection path is better¹⁸, which matches the general principle that a weak or degraded signal makes the threshold harder to set consistently.

Landmark and notable noise gate pedals

The noise gate world has a clear hierarchy in the press: a few long established names, a wave of compact gates, and a cluster of high end metal oriented designs.

Boss NS-2. The NS-2 stays in the conversation through placement guidance: the drive section is "also the logical place for a noise gate like the NS-2 to control the unruly pedalboard section"¹⁵. That is the spot where noisy gain pedals gather, and noise gate pedals are most useful to players of heavy high gain music and players with noisy boost, distortion or fuzz pedals, the very pedals that make a drive section unruly.

Not every notable gate works the same way, and the differences matter to the players who need them most. Noise gate pedals are useful for players of heavy high gain music, players with noisy pedals such as boost, distortion and fuzz, players with bad or unstable electricity at home, and performers where the power may be unclean²². A gate that can separate its detection from its gating, through a loop or multiple jacks, handles those rigs more precisely than one that simply sits in line.

Bypass choice is part of what separates one gate from another. Many players prefer a buffered noise gate pedal, particularly when using the loop, as this involves a lot of cables, and a buffered gate gives a boost at the front of the chain; a true bypass pedal offers no tone boosting²³. For players comparing circuits, that difference can matter as much as the gate's threshold behavior.

Revv G8. Revv's G8 Noise Gate is a metal scene favorite with "top-mounted jacks for convenient pedalboard setup"²⁴. Gearnews's 2026 guide gives it the metal and djent slot²⁵.

Whatever the size or price, the job stays the same: a noise gate removes unwanted noise rather than adding an effect²⁶. The choice between buffered and true bypass also crosses the whole category: many players prefer a buffered noise gate pedal, particularly when using the loop, since that involves a lot of cables and gives a boost at the front of the chain, while a true bypass pedal offers no tone boosting²⁶.

Envelope controlled designs. Lichtlaerm Audio's The Key and the Gate is described by its maker as "a hyper-responsive, envelope-controlled noise gate"²⁷, a design approach that tracks the dynamics of your playing rather than a fixed threshold.

Other named models. The field also includes the GOKKO KULT, which "can help reduce the noise hum and buzz of other pedals (especially high gain distortion) in your pedal chain"²⁸; Sonicake's dual mode Noise Wiper²⁸²⁹³⁰; GUP Tech's GUUL and the Vault range of available gate pedals³⁰; AMT's compact Incinerator NG-2 noise reduction pedal²⁸²⁹³⁰; and Pigtronix's Gatekeeper, which "cuts out unwanted rig hum"²⁸²⁹³⁰.

Gates built into other pedals

Many players never buy a standalone gate because their drive or fuzz pedal already has one. BLAMMO! Electronics' Deth Pedal includes "the internal noise gate with bleeder resistor that REALLY cuts down the hiss and hum between notes but also allows them" to decay naturally³¹. Even DIY circuits get in on it: Jed's Peds notes of its Pink Mule FV1 board that "some builders have experienced white noise when using this whilst others haven't! A noise gate may solve th[e] problem"³².

What reviewers make of the category

Whatever the individual picks, the category's job is not in dispute: a noise gate removes unwanted noise rather than adding a new effect³³. The guides also converge on who needs one: players of heavy high gain music, players with noisy boost, distortion or fuzz pedals, players with bad or unstable electricity at home, and performers where the power may be unclean³³. Where they differ is on placement and wiring, with the drive section the commonly recommended spot for a gate.

Questions