eliminating "noise"

HughesJB4 wrote: rileydog22 wrote: MikeEnRegalia wrote: Noise gates are great especially in live situations, but for recording it's definitely best to try to eliminate noise at its source ... a noise gate - as Highes said - also removes parts of the signal you're trying to record. Something you also could consider: The Line6 Variax guitar. It doesn't have any conventional pickups to start with. Are you sure you aren't a Line 6 employee, Mike?  Now I'm curious, though: if it doesn't have any pickups, how does it make sound?    It does have pickups, MikeEnRegalia did state it does have pickups. Checking the Line 6 website, I cannot find anywhere in the specifications list exactly what kind of pickups are employed in the Variax, it simply states they are not of the traditional magnetic type. The Variax 600 and 700 come equipped with the L.R Baggs tremolo bridge, which I imagine have piezo pickups incorporated into them to help with the acoustic guitar models, but I cannot confirm that, and perhaps MikeEnRegalia can further educate us on the Variax.

Of course you are correct ... what I meant was that it does not have any *magnetic* pickups. It has piezo pickups which are digitized and then used as a basis for all the guitar models, not just the acoustic ones.

I'm just saying that with the Variax you get a very clean signal ... and if you're also using a POD XT Live or Vetta II you can even get the signal to the computer in pure digital form. I know that many people are opposed to digital formats when it comes to guitars, but if you're using hard disk recording the signal will at some point be converted to a digital format anyway ... converting it to digital very early in the signal chain makes a lot of things much easier.

BTW: I'm not a Line6 employee ... and as a matter of fact I don't own a Variax or a POD XT - they're on my wishlist though. Currently I own a POD (the first model) and the GuitarPort, that's all.