All user reviews for the Electro-Harmonix The Silencer

I’ve used it with a US Standard Strat (neck pickup replaced with a Seymour-Duncan SHR-1B) and an Epiphone Les Paul Custom Pro; my amps are a Fender Machete and a Marshall 8240 Stereo Chorus. I play all kinds of music ranging from Dire Straits to AC/DC to the Beatles, Genesis and Depeche Mode.

I use several stompboxes, the noisiest of them being the ProCo Rat, Boss CS-3, Boss PH-2, Boss OD-2, and the Silencer really does the job when using the appropriate routing for the FX loop.

The pedal comes with a 9V battery, though having renounced to using batteries for ages now I use it with a Thomann supply. Controls are very efficient:

- the Thresh[old] knob sets the signal level necessary to open the noise gate and allow the signal through
- the Reduction knob controls the amount of signal reduction, ranging from -70 to +4 dB
- the Release knob controls how fast the envelope signal closes down after the incoming signal falls under the threshold. In a nutshell, this setting will allow you to tell the box when it is able to cut the signal again when you’ve finished playing the last note of your musical phrase. That speed can be set anywhere from 8 milliseconds to 4 full seconds.

Unlike Boss (and many others), the manual doesn’t feature a routing diagram which may disturb beginners, so if need be I advise you to have a look at the Boss’s manual (available here, see on page 2: http://lib.roland.co.jp/manual/en/dl_06-10493/NS-2_e.pdf ) as the logic behind it is exactly the same as with the Electro Harmonix Silencer: you plug the guitar to the Input, the amp to the Output, get the signal out from the Send to the first pedal in the effect chain to be processed and get it back in plugging the output of the last pedal in that chain to the Return plug. Not so difficult, yet a connection schema would have been useful to those who don’t know how to use such a setup.

I haven’t tried the ISP Decimator G-String, but it costs 275€ (vs. 59 for the Silencer) so clearly the Silencer is unbeatable as to its value-for-money.