Electro Harmonix Silencer

In my chain this pedal is the highest hierarchically, extending its scope over the entire chain from the guitar input to the return of the fx loop of my tube amp.
Since currently i have an twofold impedance mismatch between an amp and a cab, it produces a constant low hum, making playing a single coil guitar through the setup being excessively noisy. Implementing a noise-gate X-connection with this pedal battled every type of noise that could appear in my chain, and had just enough controls to make it sound organic.

My main points of experience:
+ The noise-gate X-connection does not damage the tone, and no phase cancellation running it through a long loop has been a problem;
+ The range of control values on the knobs can make this pedal take on more functionality than just of a noise gate, so however strange it may sound, it may be played around with as well;
+ Small current draw, as of the majority of EHX pedals, favors the owners of large pedalboards;
- Even though it can be tweaked with the proper combination of "Threshold" and "Reduction", it seems to have been more intuitive to have a separate "Attack" knob. However the pedal functions just as well without it.

I was very proud of never having felt the need of a noise supressor. But when I switched from playing guitar in a bass amp with a distortion pedal (EHx Metal Muff) to using a real guitar amp with its built in distortion... my Needs changed.

The amp (Peavey Bandit) isn't noisy, at least with my settings, but I like to use flanger in front of the amp and my Neo Mistress, when was turned on and I wasn't playing, made a lot of noise, I guess it did before but, since my bass amp lacked in the mid range when compared to the Bandit, I never noticed that much. So I had to swallow my pride and search for a noise supressor.

I knew about the Boss one, since my old PW10 Wah had some NS2 inspired noise gate functionality in its drive selection mode, but I never liked that implementation on the PW10. So I did what I usually do when in need of a new type of pedal: see if EHx has one, and they did! And, as usually, it is cheaper and with all the essentials.

It took a while for setting it up correctly, I read about the X method (using the amp in the Noise Gate's FX loop), I tried what I read online but I figured that my problem wasn't the same as most people had. Usually the problem reported is that the amp is noisy, mine isn't, so I tried to isolate the noisy pedal.

The best placement I found for the Silencer is right before the amp, I have Wah -> Compressor -> Phaser -> Flanger -> Soft OverDrive -> Silencer, than a volume pedal (mostly to soften the amp's distortion in some parts and to volume swells) and then the Bandit. If I turn the Silencer off I hear the Mistress and the Compressor, but with it turned on they stay silent.

I tried the Silencer in the FX loop but I couldn't find the right threshold, since what worked to the distorted signal was too much for the clean signal. So I ended with this solution, I cut the noise the clean signal path and then I apply distortion, it works for me! And I can still play around with letting notes ring for a long time and generating feedback with distortion and flanger.

The Silencer is a great tool, with a FX loop its versatility is on pair with the more advanced and expensive Noise Gates I think. I really find it useful, competent and makes me sound more professional without unwanted extra noises.

I use the silencer at the output stage from my Zoom G5 effects processor, some of the effects can be very noisy especially when used in conjunction with the on board "Tube booster"
I found it to be brilliant in noise reduction without loosing actual punch in the output signal, over the years i have used noise reduction systems but always found then to be compressors and limiters as oppsed to actual noise reduction without dramatic loss of imput signal power, this is by far the best add on i have used and will recommend it to any serious guitarist who likes to use high end sustain, definately a 5 star product