JVM Forum

I'm using the smartgate in the loop and it's working awesome for me. the other guitar player in my band also got one after hearing how well mine worked. He was initially unhappy with his as well. After tweaking the settings on the mxr a little and setting the send to full wet, he got his dialed in too. Don't give up yet.......

Like I said, mine is the only thing in the loop so it just stays turned on all the time. But I only have the loop engaged for a couple of channel settings, OD1 orange and above.

Well I'm looking for something to slam shut all the noise through the loop, which is what I thought that's what the smartgate did - does anyone know if the ISP does that?

Jay,

I'm referring to the effects loop that's not switchable. I use the switchable loop for a digital delay.

I just finished a test with 2 noise gates. ISP Decimator (Pedal) and Boss NS-2

Simple results:
Both do what they should do. The difference: Boss can't suppress enough noise. I had to set the threshold to full and it just worked. A little bit more noise/gain and it wouldn't do enough.

ISP had even more headroom. So no problem to get rid of all kinds of noise. Only one knob, no further features. Easy.
I kept it and send the Boss pedal back. Disadvantage: The ISP costs almost twice as much. But I think it's worth it.

P.S.
None of both are better than my old RSP Racksystem which is sometimes available on Ebay for arround 40 - 70 Euros. But I needed a small solution for rehearsals so that I don't have to carry my rack arround.

And you just put it in the loop and it shut everything down? That's what I need then.

Yes, I put it in the parallel loop set to fully wet. Though it makes no sense to shut down the whole signal (not just the unwanted noise) it didn't let anything through when dialed to max.

The Boss pedal has a setting where you can have the noise reduction on and with a step on the pedal it mutes the guitar. Maybe this it what you are looking for?

If you just need a "stronger" noise reduction, the ISP is for you. And if you are willing to spend more money the ISP G-String would probably be even better, but not necessary for my opinion.

I just come from years of rack playing where with really high gain everything goes dead silent. I'm looking for that same type thing. I'm waiting for my income tax return and I've looked into either the ISP or Smart Gate. I'll may get both and find which one does what I need and go from there.

I have to plug the ISP here...I have not used the G-string but I have the Decimator Pro Rack G and it's simply amazing. I came from the same school as you with all the rack stuff and I really wanted that dead quiet/no noise thing. The ISP stuff certainly gives that to you. As far as I can tell, the G-String should work really well. However, if you need more control over your board and FX loop, you may want to consider the Decimator. It's more expensive but you have 2 super easy to set channels, 1 for your pedal board and 1 for the FX loop. Plus, it has an extra control that attenuates the high end...pretty cool and SUPER quiet. I have a very noisy pedal board and run a TC G-Maj and the ISP kills all the noise and does not effect the tone at all. Every other gate I've had sucks tone or kills sustain, not the ISP stuff. Best purchase I've made in 10 years...Apart from the JVM of course!

Very good info here, thanks! Yeah I got really spoiled for about 18 years with the rack stuff. I used the old ADA MP-1 and the Alesis Quadraverb and a few other things into a Mesa/Boogie 50/50 power amp with the Rocktron Hush IIC and at 110 dB you heard NOTHING! Not even the common hiss to let you know the amp was on.
Well now I think the JVM destroys all of that rack gear as well as any other amp however I want it quiet like the old days.

Ha,ha, sweet!!! I had an Alesis quadraverb in my rack too!!! I still have it as a matter of fact...It's in my recording rack now. Decent little unit and easy to use. Does not come close to my gmaj though. I had a G-Force for a while and that was ridiculous.

If you liked the Hush stuff, you'll love ISP. ISP was started by the dudez from Rocktron that invented the HUSH circuitry. Only, ISP is WAY better!

Love the JVM with the gmaj and ISP...UNBELIEVABLE!!! Best, most organic tone I've ever had and DEAD quiet!

Well then that's really the way I should roll then. I was concidering the smart gate but after hearing everything about the IPS and seeing how it was the guys from rocktron, that's an even bigger selling piont!
I'm just very short on cash now - waiting an income tax check!

I had the Quadraverb in my rack in the 80s and early 90s too. I tried to make it work with the JVM but it just sucked tone no matter what I did. It now resides in our PA rack doing vocal reverb/delay duties. It was very cool in its day, and I still like it.

DH

Yeah for me the biggest problem with all that early stuff was that most of it was only 8 bit processing and you always had that 1.5 second delay between patches.
I spent $8000.00 on my two racks and none of that stuff comes close tone wise to what the JVM does for me.

What a magic amalgamation of components and hardware he put together to create the most perfect tone machine I've ever heard. I am going to throw a huge party someday hosting Santiago Alverez as the Guest of Honor for what he created in the JVM.

All true, except - my fuzzy recollection is that the Q-Verb is 16 bit?

DH

Yeah now that you mention it I think you're right DH. But the 1.5 second glitch between patches was the final deal breaker for me in a live situation. But for that time it was state-of-the-art.