ISP Technologies Decimator Noise Reducer

One Knob (ohh) so simple, turn one way hiss goes turn the other hiss comes back.

I use this with rack gear and an old Marshall JCM800 and it works like a charm. I play Metal so need ultimate silence in between stabs the pedal does what it says on the tin. Tone wise to my ears there is no loss. Tried gates racked hush units and this is by far the best.

Built like a brick Sh*t house so I have no worries about gigging with it.

Sent an email before buying as they weren't widely know in the uk and got quick helpful response.

I'd definetly buy another if anything happened to the first one. It looks the biz and does what it supposed to with any farting about.

Very Easy to use. It is a noise gate. Plug it in and dial until your noise is gone. Very easy.

I don't know if the other reviewers were lucky and got good units, or if perhaps they fell for this thing without really listening to how it colors the sound. I had one and returned it for another thinking the first was a bad unit, and it did the same exact thing. What am I talking about? I plugged directly into my amp on the noisiest gain setting and I get a little hiss, not bad, and in fact I don't care to clean that up- it is natural and tolerable. I just want to clean up my guitar signal into the amp. Now, I plug into the Decimator and then into the amp on the same setting (without the Decimator engaged) and now, a huge increase in hiss. Cords? You ask. No way. Brand new Mogami cables. Amp? You ask. No way. Brand New Hughes and Kettner Triamp (no cheapy amp here). Now, engage the pedal and it takes away the noise from the guitar, but the increased channel hiss is still there. I want a noise gate to clean up noise, not add noise. I really wanted this unit to work.

It is reliable. You could throw it against a wall and it would still work. But, the problem is, it would still work. It is the Mafia Pedal. It gives you noise you don't need and then takes it away. It's like protection money.

I called customer support with this problem. They seemed eager to help and promised me that if I did not find satisfaction with their supplier of this unit, they would make it right. The only thing is. It does not work in the way a noise gate should.

I have been playing for over 25 years. I am a semi-professional player. I have released CD's on Indie labels. I play all professional gear and guitars. I take my tone and my sound seriously. This unit promises to deliver, but it does not. I wish it would, because it is simple to use, does not squash your signal, but unfortunately adds noise.

How simple can it get with one knob and on/off?

I bought the Decimator pedal yesterday to stick in my effects loop to quiet down the typical premap noise. I have a Boss GT-8 (the Decimator comes last in the chain - after the GT-8 of course) and the GT-8's noise reduction is fairly decent but I have noticed a definite tone impact in the high frequencies when setting the threshold at my required levels. Now, with the GT-8's noise reduction even when fully gated there was a light high frequency hum that was still noticeable to be irritating though not too loud. So, disenchanted with the possibility of using the GT-8's reduction I went out and bought the Decimator on so many recommendations.

First thing I'll note about the pedal is how much it weighs. This thing is the heaviest Boss styled pedal I've ever came across. It feels like you're holding a solid brick. It's chrome which looks really hot and is made of sturdy metal. I wonder if it's the pedal construction that makes it heavy or a bunch of tightly crammed in circuitry? I'm curious. Anyhow, I set it up through the effects loop and started raising the threshold until the sound went quiet. I gave it just a slight tad of extra threshold just to be on the safe side. When I started playing I was suddendly appauled. It was pumping and breathing the sound like crazy and the volume of my guitar was cut in half. So I was nervous. So I backed of on the threshold till it was at the point where it was quiet when not playing, like you're normally supposed to set it, and bingo everthing was fine. No pumping, back to normal volume, and dead quiet when not playing. This thing even took away that small hum that was still present with the GT-8. The only way you can tell audibly that the amp is on is to go up to the speaker to hear the light ambient "air" that all speakers have when the amp is on.

I started contemplating whether it's worth the $130 (120 plus tax) to use this pedal rather than the GT-8 and I came to the conclusion of yes it is. I have to say that I don't feel they really should be charging $120 for these pedals. I think they should be more around $80. The thing that irks me most about the pedal is that the threshold difference can be sooo slight and make such a huge difference between noise reduction and completely cutting off the signal entirely!! I wish there was a lock for the adjustment knob caused I'd be scared about accidentally hitting it with my foot live on stage and turning off my sound. If I were to be using it live I would have it out of the way where it couldn't be touched.

So, overall it's a great pedal that gets rid of your amp and effect noise and does so completely (at least for me it does). It's true that it DOES NOT effect your tone - at least not in any way that I can hear and I have acute hearing. It's built extremely solid and rugged feeling, looks great, and is IMO a bit pricey. It is however very sensitive with threshold adjustment and the slightest bit of knob movement can mean the difference between it doing it's job and utterly f'ing up your sound so make sure to put it out of the way after getting it set. It also does an excellent job of avoiding cutting off sustained notes.

Hmm... I'll give this a seven only cause of the knobs super sensitivity. The construction is rock solid, built like a tank. But if you just tap that knob with your foot live on stage forget about it! Remember to put it out of the way after you set the threshold! So since this risk is present I'm only giving it a 7 for reliability.

Overall I love this pedal as it does what it's supposed to do. But being it's a bit over priced at $120 and the knob is really sensitive I have to cut a few points off so overall I'm rating an 8.

Honestly, if you haven't gotten the point of how easy this pedal is by now, then you really have to pay more attention. I bought this pedal used, and I really dont need a manual. You plug it in (either in your string of pedals, or in your effects loop), turn it on, and turn the knob until the hiss or hum (whichever is the problem, for me it's a hum from my pickups) goes away. Ta Daaaa. Seriously. You'd have to be pretty f'ing stupid to not know how to work this pedal.

For a setup, I'm running a Mesa/Boogie F-100 head through a Marshall 1960AV cabinet, and my pedal string goes (in this order), Boss TU2, Line6 DL4, Line6 MM4. I have my Decimator going through my Mesa's FX Loop, and holy wow does it rule. I have fairly hot pickups in my Gibson SG (stock, open coil humbuckers), so I get a pretty gross hum when I'm playing my dirty channel. The Decimator cuts out most, if not all of the hum from my humbuckers, and from the channel gain.

I bought this pedal off of a friend of mine who owned it for 3 years prior. I saw the way he treated it, and I'm surprised that it hasn't turned into a heap of broken pedal. This pedal is honestly like a brick. You could easily kill a man with this pedal if you threw it at him, not that anyone should do that, but yeah, this thing will never die.

I haven't had to deal with them, and I doubt that I ever will. :]

ISP Decimator = incredible.

This thing is so easy to use. You only have to do 2 things, decide where you want it in your chain and turn 1 knob.

I play a 5150 with a very hot preamp, and not having a noise suppressor/gate is out of the question. I bought the MXR Smart Gate and it didn't cut it so I decided to give the Decimator a shot.

I have two sound issues and a perfect unit would kill both of them:

1)high gain feed back: If i put the decimator at the end of my effects chain before my amp the decimator does an amazing job of killing this noise. Even on rapid bursts of stocatto notes it is silent in between. At killing this sound alone I give it a 10. However putting it before the amp does not kill sound #2.

2)amp hum: If i put the decimator at the end of my effects loop (which isp recommends) I was utterly amazed that 'decimated' 99% of the hum from my amp. For this I give it a 10. However, it did nothing for the high gain feedback (sound #1).

For me getting rid of the feedback was the #1 issue, which is does remarkably well, but to give a unit a 10 I'd like to see it kill both. So overall I give it an 8.

This thing is built like a tank. It is shaped like a BOSS pedal, but seems to be even heavier duty.

I haven't dealt with them, but I here they are very good.

So like I said in the sound category I have two sound that I ultimately want to kill. For this reason I splurged and got the 2 channel rack mount unit (see my review). If you only need to kill hum or high feed back this unit is a must have, however I want to get rid of both so I ended up going with the rack mount version, and am returning this unit. I love its simplicity, durability, and the fact that it does exactly what it is supposed to. Don't even think about buying a Smart Gate, this is your unit.

Very easy to use. I play humbucker-equipped strats and teles into a Barber Burn Unit, Boss chorus and delay, and then into a 70s silver-faced Champ. I was getting a ton of noise through the Champ in the venue I play at, especially with the Burn Unit on. I plugged in the Decimator after my delay (end of the chain) and was pretty stunned at the results. As the reviews above say, the Decimator only has one knob. Essentially you turn clockwise until you can't hear anymore noise, but not so far that you prematurely kill your signal. It wasn't hard in my case, but it can be a little tricky because if you turn it too far, when you play quietly on a clean setting it'll cause your signal too fade in and out, very similar to a tremelo effect. It's actually kind of a cool sound, but it may not be something you want. So you just have to find a good balancing point where you kill most of the noise but still have a good, strong signal. If need be, you can always reach down between songs and tweak it a tiny bit. It really isn't tough.

One of the most impressive pieces of equipment I've ever tried. I don't write that many product reviews, but I do when I'm really impressed by something. The Decimator did exactly what it claimed it would, killed excess noise generated by noisy pedals without negatively effecting my tone. I've been playing electric guitar for around 18 years, and for my ears, I noticed no discernible effect on my tone, even when I switched it on and off while playing. I mention above what can happen when you're playing quietly on clean if you set the knob too far, but for me, it was easy to find a good balancing act between lack of noise and strong signal. And this thing is extremely easy to tweak between songs, or even during a song. For anyone running through a lot of pedals including overdrive/distortion pedals, I would strongly recommend the Decimator, especially if you're going into an older tube amp. Very professional sounding.

N/A: I just got this a couple of weeks ago, and have only played out with it twice. So I really can't comment on reliability yet. But I can tell you the pedal feels very solid, and has a metal casing. Basically, it looks like it's built like a stainless steel tank.

I emailed ISP a couple of times with tech questions before purchasing and they responded immediately. However, I don't have any experience with their customer service if the pedal fails, because that hasn't happened. So I gave them an 8.

Very good buy. Very professional and effective unit, for a very reasonable price, IMO. Would heartily recommend.

Obviously dead simple, but one must be careful of exactly where to put it. For my use, it's very easy.

My setup is fairly elaborate, so I'll just pare it down to where I put this pedal; I run a boss NS-2 into a 5150, but I don't use the 5150's power section; I pulled the tubes. I run it into a separate power amp, a VHT 2/90/2.

Even with nothing plugged into that 5150 it's enough white noise to calm a neonatal ward, so where I use the Decimator is actually after the preamp of the 5150 - basically like a serial effects loop - so that when I stop playing, you hear NOTHING. I set the threshold so it cuts off when there's no signal through the 5150, and I am extremely happy.

Great for scaring cats.

If it were smaller I'd buy a bunch and make body armor out of them, and if someone tried to shoot me, I'd still gig with it. Bullet deflected.

I got this from Rock Solid Amps in Ft. Lauderdale when I bought an ENGL Powerball. Man, is the fucking guy that owns that place (his house, that is) a cocky used car salesman dick. I've never dealt with ISP, but Rock Solid sucks.

I play tech metal, and for my uses, this is an amazing pedal. I may get a rack version of it, since I need another one for my second signal, but for now, I think this thing is amazing.

Well, it is fairly easy. There is one knob and a foot switch. However, there's a difference in knowing how to kill the noise and knowing how to effectively use this device. Basically, you must decide how much noise reduction to enable and then when to turn it on or off. Obviously, between songs you will want it on. And in some songs you will want to keep it on. But, for some songs that may be gentler, you may want to turn it off. For example, the last time I played, we had a song that I needed to be heavy at my entry point. So I had a somewhat crunchy tone selected with the Decimator turned on. Then once I got through the crunchy part, there was a more mellow part that I needed clean sustain on. So at this point I turned the device off.

Well, this device will certainly kill the noise. But you must be careful not to reduce too much of the sustain in the process. Basically, the more you turn the knob, the less noise and less sustain you get. It's kind of a balancing act that you must perform. I have basically three main tones: Clean, Crunchy, and High gain. So, what I usually do, is set the device so that when I'm not playing but have my Crunchy tone turned on, there is no noise. This allows for a descent amount of sustain on the Crunchy and High gain tones. And then when I play clean, I just simply turn off the device. As far as being transparent, other than eliminating hum and reducing sustain, there is no noticeable tone coloration.

Only had it a couple of weeks. But it looks like it could survive being run over by a semi truck. It is quite heavy, more so than a typical Boss, DOD, etc... stomp box style peddle.

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I bought it from www.humbuckermusic.com And they seem very nice! I'll definitely be shopping with them again! 8-)

This is an vital part of my setup because of the electrically noisy venue I am currently playing in. Also, note that I am running direct from my amp modeler into the PA. So I have no experience on how this effect would work with a real amp. But, I'm sure it would be somewhat similar. Anyway, if it was lost or stolen, I'd probably get another one. I've considered getting another one for handling different amounts of noise reduction depending on which tone I might be using at the time.

Extremely easy to use ... only one knob!

Used some extremely high-gain pedals in front of it, and it quashed the noise completely. Ran the output through some other noiseless pedals into a DAW, and the noise level in the DAW was nearly the same as when the output was totally disconnected from the A/D interface. Pretty amazing. Compared it to an MXR Smart Gate, which also works pretty well, but that unit let through some hiss which was discernable. The Decimator is a lot better. The Decimator also sounds very transparent. Playing solos then stopping fast, it gated very fast and natural, but when letting chords ring, it allowed them to slowly decay. There's no stuttering at all.

Only had it for a little while, but it is built like a tank! Size and shape are like Boss pedals, but it weighs twice as much. The chrome enclosure is hefty and solid.

Spoke with them over the phone, and they answered my questions, were knowledgeable, and very friendly.

This is the best noise reduction unit for someone playing extremely high-gain distortion. It is equally at home in a live situation on a pedalboard (or in an effects loop), or recording direct. Compared to the MXR Smart Gate, it works better, reducing the noise a lot more, while retaining the tone and character of the guitar.

It is veeeeery easy to use.

i tried this deciamtor pedal with Marshall 2000, Bad Cat, THD flexi50 and Little Lanilei, Gisbson lespaul std and a American strat, Fulltone pedal: fulldrive2, fat boost, deja2, cry baby dunlop, kenley compressor, dd5 delay boss...dist pro fulltone...a nd some more pedals, i tried different set ups, including a boost of 27 db in my strat. it works perfect but i had to put the delay next to the amp, bercause the deecimator pedal cut the delay level, not big deal, really. It doesn?t change the timbre or tone of the sound i am using, same sound but i can hear some difference on decay, just a bit, not a big problem. I fully recommend this pedal if you have any kind of boost, over drive and distortion. remember this pedal is designed only to eliminate the noise that comes just from pedals, it doesn?t eliminates noise from amp or ground problems. Great creation!!!!!!!!!

i just called them once, they were very nice. They answered my questions.

i just got it, i used it for 7 hrs, all kinds of set ups and different volumes, it is perfect if you get noise from pedals and or guitar only.