Rocktron HUSH Super C Guitar Rack Noise Reduction

My duncan jb pickup has traditionally been so hot, that, at rest, I always have a loud hum, despite rewiring the pickup and pots. This may be helpful with anyone with a similar need to get it working perfectly (im using the rack unit)... First of all, my stack : Guitar -> Marshall jmp 1 preamp -> rocktron Xpression (effects loop) -> mesa 50/50 power amp -> Madison 4x12 cab 1) adding this unit at the end of the chain in effects loop (as the standard suggested setup) did nothing to fix the hum at all (not sure why). 2) adding this unit outside the effects loop, just going series between the preamp and power amp solved the hum, but as I feared, cuts the reverb and delay from effects, despite any configuration of the gate and threshold, so that was useless. 3) interestingly, moving this unit to the first thing in the chain, before the preamp, works perfectly. This means that the guitar goes to channel A input on the hush, and channel A output goes to the preamp input. Effectively, im using this to clean up the raw guitar input before anything else, and the rest of the stack remains as it was. TL;DR: Guitar -> Hush -> jmp 1 preamp -> Xpression (effects loop) -> mesa power amp I'm my case, there's 0 noise or need to clean up the signal coming from the preamp, so this arrangement is perfect. Its worth mentioning im also using a low end Furman power conditioner, so even with low end, i get no ground noise, which might be why post-noise suppression isn't necessary. The hot signal from the jb bridge pickup is what needed to be cleaned up before anything else. Hope this may be useful to someone. 5 stars because it solved my nose problem I had for years, and for a good price point. In general, this unit may be perfect at the price for just cleaning up raw input. Perhaps a higher end suppressor makes sense if you need something at the end of the chain that doesn't fit your effects out though.

The Rocktron Hush Super C is terrible. It doesn't work. I bought it thinking that it would eliminate or at least help quiet down a loud hiss/hum when I turned on my distortion, but it didn't, and when I did manage to quiet down the hum from my distortion with it, my tone was sucked into a huge black hole! Bottomline, this unit doesn't work. If you have a small hum from your distortion, then I can see it maybe working, but it doesn't quiet down extreme distortion and when I set it up to my liking my tone wasn't there anymore. I couldn't even hear the reverb or delay from my Lexicon reverb unit. There have been people that have had this unit work for them, but if you're playing loud with distortion, I really don't see how. I bought mine around 1:30 and I returned it by 3:00 all within the same day!

This review is for the Hush Super C rack mount unit. My first impression was "hey, it's metal". Except for a clear plastic overlay on the front, it is all metal. That's nice for a rack unit. It has no feet, so a "non-rack" installation will require some rubber stickon feet. The unit is a stereo device, but has a single input marked "mono" if you only have one lead, as you would with a guitar. My main interest for the use of this device was in my digitizing studio to remove noise from really noisy sources, like old cassettes or noisy LP records. There is an input switch labeled for guitar or audio. All my tests were done with the switch in audio. The noise reduction is quite impressive. The manual states that the Hush can be configured to decode Dolby B recordings. The noise reduction available can be compared to a dbx. This is a single ended device, meaning no encoding is necessary. That being said, if you're not careful, the adjustments can be overly aggressive and make the source sound dull. My method of adjustment was to play a blank tape without Dolby and set the threshold control to just where the noise was down about 20 db, then adjust the gate so the light was just on, a nudge past where it was flickering. This achieved, to me, the best performance without degrading the original sound and taking away too much shimmer from the highs. The difference between on and off is striking. I have several other single ended noise reducers. Phase Linear, BSR and dbx, and none of them are as good as this HUSH. Rocktron claims some patents for the HUSH. These guys have it right.

Awesome deal!

Does what it's supposed to do, and does it well!