Jim Dunlop MXR Bass Compressor Pedal

Product Information

Adding a compressor to your setup will also increase the sustain of your bass – it makes quiet sounds louder, but any mistakes in your playing will also be more noticeable. Bass Compressor Terminology The clean looks combined with the top-end connectors are sure to tidy up your pedalboard. The compressor pedal will fit like a glove in bright-sounding bass guitar rigs that need rounding off. The MXR bass compressor (M87) is universally admired as one of the most transparent compressor effects pedals. It’s famed for its clean performance and tight low end.

The Compressore is a retro-looking tube bass compression pedal with true bypass. It is bulky, robust, and surprisingly lightweight. The control panel features six knobs in an intuitive layout. Markbass is the most cost-effective tube bass compression pedal up for grabs. It is a great-sounding compressor, famed for color and resistance to outside noise (at least in the tube comp realm). The settings you use on your compressor when you’re playing through a little practice amp will seldom reap results when you hit the practice room with the full Rig Of Doom! Recommended setupThe Blend allows for a clean/parallel mix that can be used for compression adjustment or reclaiming the natural bass tone in aggressive compression settings. Of course, the catch is the complex operation. This isn’t a set-and-forget comp for a bass player. You must put in the knob-work to milk the flexibility. Verdict

My Review: TC Electronic is known for its simple to use, high-quality pedals housed in the tiniest enclosures, and the Spectra Comp is no different. It is a digital multi-band compressor crammed into their “mini” enclosure. It only has one control knob that takes care of your compression needs. The way a 1-knob compressor becomes a versatile tool in TC’s book is by having it support their TonePrint feature. This functionality lets you beam one preset compressor from your iPhone or Android, directly to the pedal, it’s like having dozens of compressors at the touch of a button. Using the TonePrint Editor on mac or PC gets you access to a multitude of parameters enabling you to tailor the compression settings of the Spectra Comp to your liking and loading it to your pedal. How it sounds depends on the TonePrint you have loaded into it, but generally, the sound quality is excellent with a very low noise floor. Bottom Line: If you are looking to get a very quiet, transparent, well-designed compressor, with control over most of your compression parameters, give The TLC Bass compressor an ear or two. My Review: Electro-Harmonix brought out the Soul Preacher Nano not too long ago as a miniature of their legendary ’70s Soul Preacher Compressor/Sustainer. It was a good pedal, but it performed much better with guitars than with basses. This is not to say that bass players didn’t enjoy the Soul Preacher, just that it needed a few tweaks to make it stand out as a compressor for bassists. And that is exactly what they did. They took the Soul Preacher and tailored it to better suit modern bass players, creating the Bass Preacher compressor. It is housed in the same enclosure as the Soul Preacher Nano, so it’s built like a tank. The Bass Preacher has a 2 knob layout with a Volume control that serves as the make-up gain, and a Sustain knob that sets the compression ratio. Show me a bass player and I’ll show you a Cali76 on a GAS list. Studio-grade compression, tour-grade construction, and “Class-A” sound. It’s not that the Cali76 bass compressor does what other pedals can’t…Target Customer: This is a simple workhorse pedal that offers all you need from a bass compressor: a good assortment of usable sounds, a low noise floor, and you get the option to use it as a limiter or as a clean boost. From simple comps (read: vintage LA-2A style) to tube compressors like Markbass Compressore, and futuristic units with metering and 5 classic compression parameters. Too much GAS, not enough time. Output level/make-up gain– Because you’re reducing the dynamic range of your signal, you will notice a drop in overall volume when the compressor is engaged. In this case, ‘making up’ the volume level is often necessary. This comes with the side effect of also turning up the volume of the quieter notes, which can be an easy way to add punch. The quiet notes will be closer in volume to the compressed peaks. But too much boost in make-up gain due to high compression raises the noise floor, which can make a compressor noisy or prone to hissing. Types of Bass Compressors Target Customer: This is a very transparent compressor that adds just a touch of warmth to your signal, if you are looking for more character from your compressor, this one will not give you that. It offers good compression sounds, it’s very easy to set up and the blend control makes it very versatile.

The pedal is truly tour-de-force in terms of construction and dynamic range. The control panel features four knobs – Input, Output, Dry, and Ratio. The ratio range is 4:1 to 20:1. This control also affects the way the release time works in the pedal, so you can also use it creatively with whatever type of guitar you are using for another compression flavor if you want. While the things I outlined above are really only scratching the surface on how compression works and why it’s useful on pretty much any sound source, here’s a list of great guitar compressor pedals you can utilize to enhance your tone and increase your guitar’s sustain. I Can’t Hear What A Compressor Is Doing. Is It Just Me?Since you have reduced the dynamic range so the louder sounds are closer in volume the quieter sounds, your signal is clearer because your louder sounds aren’t as attention-grabbing as the softer sounds because they are much closer together in overall level. This can also be described as the “smooth” sound of a compressed signal. It is known as being a “secret weapon” of tone enhancement for guitarists across many genres, but especially funk, dance, and country.

The Darkglass bass compressor is for any bass player who appreciates a full-bodied, even tone with fat lows and a dark overall character. The MXR Dyna Comp is revered in the guitar world as being one of the “first” guitar pedal compressors.Multi-band compressors are not usually found in pedal format, but there are a few out there. Standard compressors take your signal and squash it across the whole frequency spectrum, this can result in artifacts, such as too much bass or a harsh high end. A multi-band compressor is able to work differently on different frequencies, letting you tailor your sound much more precisely. It allows you to dial in the amount of compression you want by frequency: more or less compression of the lows than the highs, or vice versa, or any combination you should desire. Multi-band compressors let you dial out compression artifacts that can sometimes occur with standard compression, by reducing or increasing the amount of compression in that specific frequency band. They work by passing your incoming signal through several filters, isolating specific frequency bands, compressing each one individually, recombining the split signals at the end.