Periodical impulse component is one of typical fault characteristics in vibration signals from rotating machinery. However, this component is very small in the early stage of the fault and masked by various noises such as gear meshing components modulated by shaft frequency, which make it difficult to extract accurately for fault detection. The adaptive line enhancer (ALE) is an effective technique for separating sinusoidals from broad-band components of an input signal for detecting the presence of sinusoids in white noise. In this paper, ALE is explored to suppress the periodical gear meshing frequencies and enhance the fault feature impulses for more accurate fault diagnosis. The results obtained from simulated and experimental vibration signals of a two stage helical gearbox prove that the ALE method is very effective in reducing the periodical gear meshing noise and making the impulses in vibration very clear in the time-frequency analysis. The results show a clear difference between the baseline and 30% tooth damage of a helical gear which has not been detected successfully in author’s previous studies.