Noise prevention

The best way to avoid noise is to stop it from appearing in the first place, rather than relying on noise gates.

String noise

Strings that are not muted by your hand may self-vibrate. This can be caused by loud sound levels, high gain preamp settings, strong compression effects or feedback. By threading a fluffy elastic hair ribbon around the guitar neck, the open string noise is reduced drastically. The ribbon can easily be pushed behind the nut if you want to play open strings (see picture below).

Electromagnetic noise

Noise sources

Noise appears in all audio electronics, partly because they pick up electromagnetic fields from speakers, power cables, computer monitors, TV sets, flourescent lightning, electric motors, radio broadcast signals etc; partly because noise is generated by "friction" between electrons and atoms when electric current flows through a circuit. The latter goes especially for amplifier circuits, where not only the original signal (with its own noise content) will be amplified a lot, but more noise will be added in the amplification process itself. This is one reason why overdriving a signal makes it more noisy.

The amount of noise produced in an electronic device is indicated by its signal-to-noise ratio, which means the level difference in dB between audio and noise.

Different ways to avoid electromagnetic noise pickup

Once a signal has become "polluted" by noise it's hard to remove the noise content without altering the original signal, so it's best to stop noise from being generated as early in the signal chain as possible. This can be done in a number of ways: