Noise reduction for electric guitars

[Matt Grondin]

Hi everyone... are there any tried and true methods for removing noise from electric guitars that have already been recorded? I try to keep as little noise as possible from getting to tape, but sometimes it's just impossible since the record I'm doing right now has been done mostly with a Strat... it's particularly noticeable when chords are allowed to ring out. This is on clean tracks mostly... noise from distorted tracks is ridiculous and I'm not even worried about it. Thanks.

[Frequency]

Yes, Waves X-Noise.

I'm SO impressed with that plug.

[Matt Grondin]

Damn, I have the Gold Bundle... I'm guessing that I would have seen it by now if it was part of the bundle though. How much?

[matt thomas]

this idea probably won't work, but try an envelope filter with the fastest attck and sloooooow release, that way it will eq out the highes on the ringing out chords, hence getting rid of hiss.. no resonance..

narco

[blesscurse]

Bias Sound Soap (even the bargain version) can work wonders. If you don't have a nice noise sample for a noise signature, you can loop even a small bit of noise/hum to get an adequate sample.

If you can find a Roland SN-700, that can also work wonders.

[RainbowStorm]

Originally Posted by dobby12

Hi everyone... are there any tried and true methods for removing noise from electric guitars that have already been recorded? I try to keep as little noise as possible from getting to tape, but sometimes it's just impossible since the record I'm doing right now has been done mostly with a Strat... it's particularly noticeable when chords are allowed to ring out. This is on clean tracks mostly... noise from distorted tracks is ridiculous and I'm not even worried about it. Thanks.

Often guitar noise is because of the treble knob being set too high on the guitar. The noise of that is really awful, even on the three noiseless pickups I have on my Richie Sambora USA strat. Any kind of limiting/compression will make that destroy the record.

But in this case it's too late. I think the volume fader is the best reduction tool for this. However, try putting a low pass filter in parallel and adjust the wetness depending on the amount of noise (max 30% though). Be aware that a too high wetness will destroy the hi-end of the sound.

If it still is too noisy I would compensate by raising some mids/low mids (widely), to make those frequencies mask the noise frequencies more. I would first try adding this on the track in parallel, and if not effective enough I would add some on the original track as well. That's because the original track should be left as natural as possible.

If it still is too noisy I would just mute the track, there's a point when the engineer can't accept the amount of noise on a track.

Remember that since the signal includes so much noise, it is very sensitive to more noise. This means try to apply as few effects as prefader and apply them as postfader instead so that you get noise reduction when you adjust the signal with the volume fader. In this case the volume fader is extremely important and should be controlled carefully.

[Dog_Chao_Chao]

x-noise is really good. Yesterday I made a recording of a very soft band that had a nice tube amp but very noisy, enough to distract me from the music. x-noise all the way. Sometimes I don´t even have to do nothing at all. Just plug it in! Great. Almost no reduction on the air frequencies, although you always loose a little bit.

[Frequency]

All Waves-stuff is TOO EXPENSIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The X-noise really is a brilliant plug. It has an amazing "learn" function. You just make sure you record some of the noise witout playing. Push "Learn" and it analyzies the hiss frequency pattern, and removes only that. You get totally hiss free tracks in 30 seconds.

However, I think you'll get a long way by using EQ. Try a narrow Q and notch out the hiss frequencies.

And use a low pass filter and go as low as you can before destroying the guitar. You don't need any frequencies above 5 or 6 khz on guitar anyway...


Good luck! :-)