In this paper, we propose a pre-processing method for the detection of wire-rope signals. This is necessary because of the lack of processing methods that are currently employed. First, we investigated the one-dimensional discrete morphological and wavelet transform. Then, we developed a pre-processing model that is based on the morphological wavelet-filtering algorithm. We then proposed a modified morphology filtering algorithm. We also designed an experiment platform for wire-rope detection. Eight levels of localized flaws (LFs) and damage were formed in the wire-rope specimen. We performed a series of experimental studies, and the results show that the proposed method can effectively filter the drift signal. The signal-to-noise ratio of the new filtering algorithm was over 26dB. The signal-to-noise ratio of the existing method is less than 15dB, and the noise-signal ratio of the new filtering algorithm has improved by 73%. Based on our results, the filtering effect of the proposed method is better than that of the present method. This study has great significance and practical value in engineering applications.