Re: Boss NS2 vs ISP decimator
I've been using the Decimator G String for maybe 10 or so gigs. I have to say it is a big help, as anti-pedal as I am. I like to keep things easy when playing live; just plug in and go. Pedals are too much for me to want to bother with most of the time. But futzing with THIS pedal is well worth it IMO.
I don't notice any tonal suck. What you get is a "chopping off" of the sustain of the note if you have the knob turned up too high. Easy to fix. Just don't turn it up that high. I keep the knob right at the point where the noise dramatically drops off when turning it clockwise, but not to the point where I hear absolute silence.
What does happen is that the pedal starts sucking at doing it's job when it starts to run low on batteries, and it also introduces weird "swishing" effects. At that point, it sounds so weird, that it is better to not even use the pedal. So I would suggest running it on wall power (though I have not started doing so yet). It does not come with a DC adapter, just the spec requirements to find the appropriate one.
The way the thing works is that there are two separate paths through the pedal: GUIT and DEC. Each has one input and one output. The GUIT path is the tracking path alone, and provides zero noise reduction. All it does is "read" the guitar signal, and use it to inform the other path (the path that actually applies the noise reduction) what to filter and what not to filter. Anything you have in the line before the GUIT input will be "read."
The other path is the DEC path, which applies the actual noise reduction. To use it, you take the output from the GUIT path and patch it back into the pedal's DEC IN. But instead of patching directly from GUIT OUT to DEC IN like this, you can also add anything that you want to go through the noise gate (DEC), but that you do not want to go through the tracking path (GUIT). This can be anything from a chain of effects to the entire pre-amp of your guitar amplifier...or both...or neither.
NOTE: There MUST be something going through the GUIT path in order for the DEC path to do ANYTHING, including simply allowing a signal through. In other words, you cannot simply use it like you would would use a standard Decimator (non-G String model), by just running your guitar into DEC IN, out of DEC OUT, and then out to the amp. It won't do anything; won't even let a note through.
Understanding how it works, you can see that it is possible to hook the pedal up in various ways. The first two are in the instructions, and the third is a variation of the first that I figured out, which allows you to use the pedal as the only stomp box in your chain, filtering your guitar noise alone:
1) You can put the guitar signal through the GUIT path, then out of that and through some or all of your effects, and then into the noise gate. This cuts down on noise introduced by the pedals without actually tracking the signal that is going through the pedal chain. This takes four cables in addition to what you have in your chain of pedals. One from guitar to pedal. One from pedal to effects chain. One from effects chain back to pedal. Then one from pedal to amp.
2) If you have an effects loop (or line in and line out) on your amp, you can put the the output from your amplifier's pre-amp through the noise gate before piping it back into the power amp. You can also insert an effects chain in one of a few spots. Either before the input of the amp, or in the effects loop of the amp, either before or after the noise reduction. Doing it without any effects, you need four cables. One from guitar to pedal. One from pedal to amp input. One from the amp's effects output or line out to the pedal. One from the pedal to the amp's effects input or line in. To do it with an effects chain, you will need one more cable.
3) How to use the pedal alone, with no other effects, was not mentioned in the instructions. But following the logic of the pedal, I figured out how to do it. You run your guitar cable into GUIT IN. Then you just run a simple short patch cable out of GUIT OUT straight over to DEC IN. Then a cable from DEC OUT to the amp's input. This is a variation of method 1 in which the effects chain is simply replaced with a patch cable.
IMO, it is expensive, but the added quality you get from having the tracking signal, plus the versatility offered by having so many ways to hook it up, make it well worth it over the regular Decimator.
