The TC Electronic Iron Curtain Noise gate pedal is a very simple and effective noise
gate pedal for the electric guitar.
At the time of making this video, this is probably one of the cheapest noise gate pedals
available for the guitar, so I wanted to check it out and see if it was worth it.
We’ll go through the controls, build quality and sound samples from this pedal, and if
you want to check it out or get one there will also be links in the video description.
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I recently picked up this noise gate pedal to add to my pedalboard so I had a way to
manage some of my excess noise that’s created by my guitars.
I have a few different guitars I work with, but some of them have single coil pickups
which produce a 60-cycle hum.
This isn’t always an issue, but it can be annoying at times especially if you’re playing
on a guitar amp with a lot of gain, so this pedal presents an easy way to get rid of that
noise whenever I stop playing.
As far as ease of use, the Iron Curtain Noise Gate is probably the simplest guitar pedal
I’ve used.
There’s only 2 knobs on it and it’s really straightforward to setup, but also very effective
and controllable.
The threshold knob sets the level that the noise gate activates.
If the level is below this point, the noise gate will activate and reduce the signal passing
through it to quiet it down.
If it’s above this point, then it will just allow the guitar signal to pass through so
we can play normally.
We want to set the threshold to a level that’s above the noise so the noise from our guitar
doesn’t open the gate, but below the lowest signal level we’ll play.
This can change based on the output level from the guitar, so we may want a higher threshold
if we’re playing chords versus quiet fingerpicking.
That way the gate activates when we need it too, but doesn’t start to close down on
our signal between notes, or cut off the end of chords too early.
We can visually see when the noise gate is reducing our signal, since the LED light will
light up.
The light turns on when the pedal switch is activated and the signal is below the threshold,
but the light turns off when the signal goes above the threshold since the noise gate is
no longer reducing the signal.
The next control is for the decay.
When the signal drops below the threshold, the noise gate doesn’t activate immediately.
Instead, the signal level kind of fades down to the reduced level.
The decay sets how fast this happens, so we can have it cut off pretty quick, or reduce
very slow to a point where it’s almost not noticeable that the noise gate is activating
and it just sounds like our chords are fading out.
One thing to note is that the noise gate doesn’t completely block the signal when it turns
on, it just drops it down to a really low level.
We can see this when we set the gate to a high threshold so it stays activated, but
play at a lower level.
In this case, we can still hear a little bit of the signal going through but it’s quiet.
Let’s listen now to how adjusting the threshold and decay can affect our sound.
The connectivity of this pedal is really simple.
It has a single input and output for the guitar.
There’s no stereo inputs, but that’s not something that’s necessary for this type
of pedal since it is intended to be at the beginning of the pedalboard signal chain,
before the guitar would be split to a stereo signal.
For powering the pedal, we have the option to use a 9V power adapter, which is what I
would recommend, or a 9V battery.
The one annoying thing about this pedal is that it does require a screwdriver to access
the battery compartment to change that battery and you basically have to take the whole pedal
apart, so this is why I definitely suggest a power supply instead.
The pedal is completely made out of metal with a metal switch, and the only plastic
on it is the knobs, so it’s well built and should be very durable.
For my overall impressions, I do think this is a very good noise gate pedal for the price,
and it’s super simple to use on my pedalboard.
I can just set the level to where I need it for my guitar, turn it on and forget about
it.
The build quality is really nice for the price and I think this pedal will also hold up really
well.
Thanks for checking out this video on the TC Electronic Iron Curtain Noise gate electric
guitar pedal.
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You can also check the video description for links to the pedal and social media accounts.