Instead of using gating to cope with the noise, I'm personally more in favour of making sure no noise enters the signal by using a proper power supply (with isolated grounds) such as the ones made by
Voodoo Lab. and good cables like you can get from
Bill Lawrence.
Some might say a proper power supply and good cables are expensive, but noisegates aren't exactly free either.
The
DigiTech / HardWire HT-6 is superior to the
TC Electronic Polytune. More options, faster response, better visibility and a more logical way of reading it. It's like reading tablature with horizontal strings instead of the illogical horizontal strings on the PolyTune.
An Ibanez Turbo Tubescreamer with Robert Keeley's
TS9DX FLEXI-4X2 mod is a great pedal, not a shadow of a doubt about it. But are you sure you need that many options ? I once designed and build a germanium / silicon / hybrid treble or full range booster / Fuzz Face / Tone Bender. Just by that title, you can imagine what it looked like. Add to that some options for setting the bias, various tone controls to choose from and you have a mammoth of a "pedal" that looks more like something you'd normally find in a Soviet bomber.
All these different sounds were really nice to try but when it came to actually using that thing for serious playing, the germanium Tone Bender with proper bias and no tone control was the only setting I used. I bet even the lads at Beavis Audio would think it was "a bit much" and they're responsible for the
Beavis FuzzLab !
Now, I know the Turbo Flexi isn't the creation of a mad scientist like the monstrosities that the lads at Beavis and I once made, but the question remains: do you need all those options ? If not and just one great sound is enough, then there are several evolutions of the Tube Screamer circuit that you might like even better.
The Maxon
OD-820 Overdrive Pro and
VOP-9 Vintage Overdrive Pro are both basically mixtures of the Klon Centaur and a Tube Screamer. They have the charge pump to make your pedal run at 18V (from a 9v input) for extra headroom and the clean blend of the Klon, but where the Klon then takes a rather crude hard clipping to ground (like the MXR Distortion+) these two Maxons put a somewhat more sophisticated circuitry of the Tube Screamer there. The clean blend is great, you just get such a more open and natural sound !
That brings me to another Tube Screamer circuitry with a clean blend, the
T-Rex Møller. The aforementioned Klon and Maxons all use a dual pot to create a mix of clean and distorted sounds, the Møller has two separate pots for you to create your own blend.
On top of that, you get a cap-switch if you want to beef up some single coils and an extra pot and footswitch for a separate clean boost.
My last recommendation is an overdrive that was designed for bass, but sounds even better when used with a guitar, if you ask me. It's the
Ibanez TS9B Bass Tube Screamer. It too has separate pots for clean and distorted signals (are you starting to see a pattern here ?) and instead of the rather limited single tone pot, a proper equalizer with bass and treble. Don't worry about it having too much low-end, that's not the case at all.
Now then lad, quite a read ! 8)
