Noise Gate pre/post effects - would this work?

[sfr]

I'm actually quite surpised at how quiet my signal chain is these days.  I'm running a plethora of FX, mostly hand-built, (my flanger, tuner, and Vol. pedal are the only non-diy pedals on my board) powered off of a Gator G-BUS, into a Crate V-30H head, often times cranked pretty loud, and haven't had too many problems.

Lately, however, I've been playing with insane amounts of distortion, getting some pretty cool synthy sounds - I've been running an LPB into a Dist+, into a Tycho-Brahe Octavia, through a Small Clone, an Ibanez flanger, a Trem Face and a Rebote.  Into my amp with a mid-gain setting.  Some of those pedals come on and off while I'm doing this, but often, they're all on.  After all that, I barely need to pick notes, and can play rather lengthy legato phrases and pull off sounds ranging from cool synth to broken Nintendo.  My band hates me.

With all that gain, the line noise I didn't notice before becomes quite loud when I'm not playing.  Sometimes, this is very cool, I can sculpt white noise an feedback into a pretty cool effect.  (Yesterday, I found out how to make my guitar sound like a flute)  Sometimes, I want it to go away.  I certainly work that volume pedal for all it's worth at times, trying to stay in control.

My bass player suggested a noise gate, the only problem being that shoving that towards the end of the line is pretty much useless, because to really be effective, I'd need to set the threshold to a point where it could begin to interfere with my playing.  I'm sure it would help keep things from spiraling out of control, but often times I'm at that point already when I want the thing to kick in.  Certainly, I need to open some of those builds and tidy them up a little bit, try and cut down on noise as best I can - but I have a feeling there's only so much I can do.

I'm wondering if this might work though - could I build a noise gate (perhaps the MXR one over at Tonepad?  The one in EPFM?) in multiple boxes, or with an FX loop, so the detection portion of the circuit is the very first thing in my chain, looking for signal before it hits any of those effects, and the part that attentuates the volume is the last thing in the chain, (or just before the delay) clamping down on things after that whole mess?  Is this even a valid idea? 

Looking at the Noise Gate project in EPFM, I could conceivably run the guitar through a splitter like one of the ones at GGG or Geofex, and take one output as the first step in signal chain, and take the other output and feed it into the external trigger on the noise gate?

Is an envelope follower something I should look at as well?  Anderton mentions using the envelope follower to control the noise gate in EPFM.  Is this a better approach? 

I guess I'll just start experimenting, but I was uncertain if this whole idea was worthwhile or not.  Actually, I'm just looking now at the Boss NS-2 Noise Suppressor, and it seems to have an effects loop - but I'm unfamiliar with the pedal, and not certain if what I've described is similar to how it functions.

I think in the end, I'm probably just making a complicated solution to a problem that rarely arises, and one for which I have a simple answer - use my volume pedal.  But the less tap-dancing I have to do when playing, the better.  Plus, I'm always in favour of any solution that involves using the soldering iron.