Gate vs sustain how do you deal with this?

    Hi,


    When reheasring we play really loud, that loud that I need to set my gate to 6.7 in order to keep it silent when needed.
    However this of course affects the sustain which is really noticeable when soloing.
    As a workound I change my gate settings when morphing to my solo sound so that apart from adding delay and changing EQ it also brings down the gate threshold.


    This seems to work fine for me but I was wondering whether this is the right approach gate-wise or is there any other or better way to deal with this?

    Maybe you're using too much of the default, "intelligent" input gate and not enough of a stomp gate, Mauce?


    I mean, if you set a stomp gate to allow your sustain but still to silence things when the level reaches a lower point than you need whilst playing, your rig should be pretty-quiet when you're not playing, no?

    Your morphing solution seems like the best for the situation without changing anything else. You could stage gates before and after heavy distortion effects etc, but thats a pain and very rig dependant. Are you using loads of gain? Any compressors?


    I'm not sure how loud "really loud" is, but naturally, excessive volume in a room will always cause problems. The sheer amount of vibration in the room will bring on loads of unwanted guitar noise, and as you know gates can only do so much before obviously killing the note tails.


    I know its lame... but maybe focus more on getting the apparent volume down a bit at rehearsal? I'm sure you're familiar, but the usual fixes are proven to work and generally make everything sound better and tighter:


    - Elevate/angle PA and guitar cabs (if used) to be directed more towards ear level (huge overall room level reduction with same/better punch)
    - Who's making the the most noise that your trying to match? Normally its a hard hitting drummer. Could you give them a monitor as they would have playing live? Or, put PA behind them so it's louder for them but matched for you?

    Some good advice here. Thanks for the responses.


    Of course the best is to lower down the volume or what also works for us is facing guitarist opposite sides of the room so that your cab is on the other side screaming in your face.
    When standing in front of the cab the sound passes at knee height.


    But the thing is that I found a workaround done in the Kemper and apparently I'm not the only one thinking of this solution.


    Thanks for your help! I'll stick with my current way of working.

    If your pedal chain is noisy, consider putting a sidechain gate at the front of your pedalboard. Best I've found is the G-String Decimator II, but make sure to put your dirtboxes in the sidechain. Chances are you'll be able to use a lot less gate on the Kemper and the sensitivity will be better because the Decimator has apriori knowledge of the clean guitar signal making it a smarter gate.