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I have an EQD Dreamcrusher fuzz that sounds great, but has a lot of background hiss when it's on (btw, it's not coming from the guitars). I've been thinking of getting a noise gate pedal to run after it, but I've never had a noise gate of any kind and I'm nervous about it affecting the sound of the fuzz. Anyone have experience with this? I'm looking at an MXR Smart Gate because it looks like it might do the job and is true-bypass. Has anyone tried this?

This may be a difficult task to accomplish.

Noise is a constant in any amplifier as you are amplifying everything flowing into the amplifier. Cascaded amplifier stages will both greatly amplify the input signal as well as any noise being fed into the amplifier and/or inherent noise in the circuit.

The simple solution: noise gate after the effect. A variety of factors will influence how this may or may not affect the performance of the circuit.
Thorough analysis of the circuit can expose sources of noise/hiss which may or may not find resolve by re-working the circuit.

I.E.
High value resistors are often used to increase input impedance to discrete BJT amplifiers. High value resistors inherently generate more noise than low value resistors. A given amplifier may or may not achieve similar performance by increasing/decreasing input impedance and/or current driving the amplifier.

This is a VERY general example. The long and short, there is no shortcut save thorough analysis of the circuit, which may or may not result in the desired change.

i have a smart gate, and it works quite well because of how you can control how much/what kind of hiss/buzz is eliminated.
so yea, smart gate might do the job.

sometimes it tends to cut the highs though. either way, +1 on the smart gate

when its on it takes the noise and boosts it aswel

if you can

just turn it off and on during the parts you really need it insted of maybe turning it on and waiting for your parts in a song or wind your guit vol down

i say enjoy it its normal work with it

I had a Dreamcrusher and it wasn't especially noisy. Although thye arepretty high hfe trannies IIRC. NKT274s right? Are you sure it's biased right? (trimpot on the board)
Just a thought -- you don't have a compressor anywhere in your rig do you?

Is the Dreamcrusher using a solo power source? I remember it saying that it doesn't like being daisy chained in a 1-Spot because it is Positive Ground.

Thanks for the replies everyone. The fuzz is running off a battery, so it's not a power supply issue. The transistors in the recent run of Dreamcrushers aren't NKT274, they're something else that I can't remember the code for, so maybe there's a difference there (I could hear the hiss on another user's demo too, so I think it's not unique to mine). I tried the trim pot already but, if it's turned to a point where the noise is killed, it also kills the fuzz. I returned it to it's original position and thought I'd go the noise gate route instead. Sounds like the Smart Gate might do it for me.

Sounds like a transistor replacement might do the trick too. If it's really noisy, you might have a bad tranny.

Look into getting like a single loop switcher pedal that way you can put your noisy pedal in the loop and just use the loop to take the pedal in and out of your effects chain. Another option would be to get a Boss NS-2 noise gate and put that in the loop of the NS-2. I use the NS-2 and put all my noisy dirt/fuzz pedals in it. The pedal is very tweakable and you can get very fine control over how it affects your tone. It does affect the tone slightly when used on some of the harsher settings. Hope you find a usable solution. Pedal and amp hiss drive me crazy!

Hmm, my Dream Crusher has some slight noise, but you will have some noise with any high gain fuzz. If it really bugs you, I would say get a noise limiter like everyone else says. I use the noise gate on my M9, but my rig has been noisy for far longer than I've had my Dream Crusher. My only advice is for you to never get a Torn's Peaker.

High gain does't necessarily mean noise. Design will play a key role in determining the noise floor and interaction within other units in the chain.
Just a side note.