PCB Mania No Noise Gate - Dang Useful Utility Pedal!!!

Readers of this blog should be well aware at this point that I'm a fan of high gain distortion and fuzz pedals. I'm also a fan of vintage transistors actually used in those high gain pedals. While you can get some absolutely amazing tones using high-gain distortion effects, you can also get a lot of tones you don't actually want. The most common is a hiss (high or low pitched) or a hum, though there are other unwanted noises that can detract from your sound. Given the prevalence of the issue, it should be unsurprising that there is a solution out there - Noise Gates. Many companies have produced a variety of pedals that essentially act as a high-pass filter - louder tones, i.e. what you actually want to hear, sail through while the softer hiss tones are filtered out. In this entry, I build PCB Mania's No Noise Gate - which is based on the Electroharmonix Noise Gate. The current EHX Silencer pedal is a bit more capable as it includes an effects loop rather than simply acting as a filter.