For many players, that solution is the BOSS NS-2 Noise Suppressor.Ĭontributed by Byron Struck and Matt Walsham for the Roland Australia Blog KILL THE NOISE The solution is to incorporate some sort of tool to defeat the interference. Many guitar players who play at high volume with high gain find themselves in an ongoing battle with noise, hum or unwelcome feedback. Simply put, you know when noise is present and you definitely want it gone. The best way to avoid noise is to use quality equipment, look after it and have it serviced. Sometimes noise can even stem from maintenance issues such as cables, dirty pots and jacks on pedals and other gear, damaged amplifiers, poorly wound and installed pickups or other guitar electronics to name but a few common causes.Īs every player and their setup is different, noise can come from many different sources. This EMI interacts with many guitar cables, pickups, amplifiers and other electronic equipment and when fed into a guitar amplifier (particularly amps with high preamp gain), can produce a lot of unwanted noise. Noise in the guitar world is usually the result of electromagnetic interference (EMI) which is all around us in the modern world. Noise in this instance is the audio we can hear that we don’t want in our overall sound. We don’t mean the experimental musical style, also called “noise”. What we mean when we say “noise” is almost always in relation to something undesirable. It can be present as high-pitched, nasal and mid-ranged, low and humming or via a heap of other ways. That horrible, unwanted and mood-destroying hiss or screech that always seems to happen at the worst possible times. Every musician, audio engineer or live sound mixer is familiar with it.