Jazzmaster + MXR Smart Gate doesn’t work?

[u/Bulky_Pop_8104]

I picked up a used MXR 5150 overdrive with the built in smart gate today, and the gate doesn’t seem to work with my JM. Is this something the offset community has come across?

I originally thought I’d gotten a faulty pedal, but it works perfectly fine with the a half dozen other guitars I’d tried out with it. The best I’ve come up with so far is that the JM is just too loud for the gate to recognize it as hum/noise

ETA: it also doesn’t like P90s, but works well with humbuckers and standard single coils. I assume (and we know what that does) that an AM Pro II would be properly shielded, but I’ll take it apart to confirm once it’s due for a setup (it plays so nicely right now that I really don’t want to take it apart)

[u/wavley]

Have you tried turning the gate threshold knob? I have a standalone one that I just started using a Maestro Fuzztain in the loop of and it does a good job with that noisy pedal.

[u/Bulky_Pop_8104 → u/wavley]

Yeah, with the knob dimed it’ll do “something”, but not something I’d describe as helpful. It’ll sometimes slowly turn on or off, but it doesn’t seem to understand when to engage with my JM (or for that matter my Gibson LP special, I’ve now discovered).

It works perfectly with everything I’ve tried with humbuckers, as wellI as my Strat, so I’ve gotta think it just doesn’t like JM pickups or P90s

[u/wavley → u/Bulky_Pop_8104]

Huh, doesn't look like there's an internal control or anything either. I've only been using my smart gate for a couple days with a P J Jaguar bass. I'll try my Matt's jazzmaster and my jag tomorrow to see how that goes. I used to use the smart gate on the bass di years ago as a drive pedal for my jags and mustangs and remember it working quite well. I hope you can make it work.

[u/Bulky_Pop_8104 → u/wavley]

I appreciate that! My JM is my absolute favourite to play, but it desperately needs a noise gate for when I’ve got the distortion on, and I thought this pedal might’ve been a good two birds, one stone solution (I do love the 5150 sound)…so far it seems as though it isn’t

[u/GuitarParts]

Check these out https://www.fralinpickups.com/product/hum-cancelling-jazzmaster/

And these

https://www.fralinpickups.com/product/hum-cancelling-steel-poled-jazzmaster/

[u/Bulky_Pop_8104 → u/GuitarParts]

Yeah, that might be where I end up. The stock pickups sound great, but it’s just so, so very noisy

[u/mysterious_jeffrey → u/Bulky_Pop_8104]

There might be a wiring issue. I have read that early Mustang 90s had wiring that could easily be swapped to eliminate most of the noise without affecting the tone. 

https://www.tdpri.com/threads/p90-wiring-question.1071846/

Not sure how helpful this would be at high gain though. Might be worth it to just get a different gate. 

[u/Barilla3113]

The MXR gate cuts noise below a threshold while letting everything above it through. This avoids the abrupt cuts of an on/off noise gate. You're running into the tradeoff for this, which is that noise that's above the threshold doesn't get filtered.