MXR pedals need no introduction. The
stamp the company put on the music
world with the Distortion+, Phase 90, Dyna
Comp, and others is enormous. So as veterans
of the pedal business, it seems only natural
that MXR would explore ways to control
the noise and hiss that can drive some
pedal users to madness. One of their newest
pedals—the Noise Clamp—is designed to
eliminate those annoyances without sacrificing
the tone of your guitar or amplifier.
Clamp On, Clamp Off
The Noise Clamp was designed for players with a lot of pedals in their signal
chain—especially where overdrives and distortions
are stacked on top of one another.
The Noise Clamp doesn’t operate like a
traditional noise gate, which cuts the background
noise of a whole chain, often at the
expense of the guitar’s tone. Instead, the
Noise Clamp detects the amount of noise
present in your bypassed guitar-tone, and
lowers the hiss and extremities to that level
when pedals in the Noise Clamp’s effects
loop are engaged.
Using the Noise Clamp could not be
easier. Simply chain your more unruly
effects into the pedal’s Send and Return
jacks, and connect your guitar and amp to
the Input and Output jacks.
Normally, the loop is always
active, even when the pedal
is off. Though you can set
the loop to work only when
the pedal is engaged by flipping
a little switch inside the
pedal. A knob to control the
volume threshold of the gate is
the only control on the Noise
Clamp’s face.
I’ll Use the Clamps
on Ya!
Using a 1978 Gibson Les
Paul Custom into a 2011
Mesa/Boogie Multi-Watt
Dual Rectifier, I connected a
Fulltone OCD overdrive, Big
Muff NYC reissue fuzz, and
a Strymon El Capistan delay
and played my guitar dry for
a few notes. After stomping
on the bypass switch, I gradually
brought up the Trigger
knob and tried to find the
sweet spot where the noisy
feedback of the OCD juicing
the Big Muff disappeared, but
the delay’s trails continued to
come through smoothly. It
was really quite miraculous
how well the Noise Clamp pulled out
the screeching feedback. But I had to
be careful not to set the Trigger control
too high with this high-gain setup—at
around 3 o’clock, individual notes were
subject to a little latency. Higher settings
caused the notes to die out with a strange
squelching sound.
To see just how well the pedal would
handle an even noisier rig, I setup a
Fender ’65 Twin Reverb reissue with a
2011 Fender Standard Stratocaster, and
ran a Boss Metal Zone in the pedal’s
loop. The Noise Clamp didn’t cut out the
natural 60-cycle hum of the Stratocaster’s
pickups that much—a beautiful thing. But
it tightened up the tone of the Boss’ pedal
considerably. If pickup noise is part of the
noise that bugs you most, you might be
better off with a dedicated noise gate. But
it’s remarkable how well the Noise Clamp
can selectively squelch noise elsewhere in
the chain.
The Verdict
MXR’s new Noise Clamp is a great choice
for players looking to reign in the feedback
and noise issues that are inevitable
from stacking overdrive units. It isn’t a
typical noise gate, so it won’t quiet down
a noisy amplifier or pickups. But if you’re
less affected by the inherent noise of your
guitar and favorite amplifier, the Noise
Clamp can do wonders.
Buy if...
you like to stack drive and fuzz pedals, but
can’t deal with wild feedback problems.
Skip if...
you need a traditional noise gate to cut
out background hiss from a noisy amp.
Rating...
