Compressors?

[bobsessed]

Are you using a compressor? I'm thinkig of trying one....What's it really doin' for you?

[BadJaxx]

smooths out the tone....equalizes the volume of individual notes....adds sustain...

mine's the Keeley Comp....not cheap, but i had a Boss for a while and didn't care for it...

Demeter makes a really good one also but they're expensive too...

[FunkyE9th]

smooths out the tone....equalizes the volume of individual notes....adds sustain...

All the above. Plus I use it as a boost to drive the front end of the amp. I have an old '80 boss compressor. I think it's a CS-1. I used to have a Carl Martin also that I ended up selling. The Carl Martin sounds more natural, but bigger foot print. The Boss is better IMO for adding sustain.

-FunkyE9th

[Guest galejt]

Barber tone press

http://www.barberelectronics.com/tonepress.htm

mixes in boost and/or compression

the following is a keeley/boss sound clip from Jason Barker's site showing the effect of compression after distortion.

keeleybd.mp3 (1.9M, mp3)

[MrGuitarguy]

The demeter is supposed to be the ultimate. It wins a lot of shoot outs and I've heard more praise for it than any other. I haven't tried it yet, but I own several Demeter products and they are all top quality.

I've had good luck with the Boss for solo boosts. It's not as "natural" as some and might not be as good for rhythm work, but it does a great job for lead and just kicking tube a notch harder for a singing quality (FunkyE9th's comment about sustain falls here for sure). It's biggest advantage it it's ability to cover a lot of ground, unlike most comps.

[tgoss]

There's a posting on the next page or so about this oneJangle box

[bobbymack]

I sold my Keeley because I didn't care for the way it squashed the attack. I've been using the Analogman Comprossor, which is Analogman's take on the classic Ross compressor, only he's added a variable attack knob which really helps...

http://www.analogman.com/rossmod.htm

[DavidE]

A friend who makes his living playing guitar in Nashville told me how to set up my Dynacomp and I haven't wanted anything else since. I really only use it on country tunes anyway.

[Guest Mike Lee]

I've got an Analog Man Bi-Comprosser, the older three knob version with the attack trimpot inside. The Ross clone side is nice, but the Orange Squeezer (aka Juicer) clone side is much better IMO. If you like the kind of compression Mark Knopfler used on Sultans of Swing, that's an original Orange Squeezer.

[Jeff R]

Boss CS-2 for me. I set mine to get a very light Nashville squish.

[jwhitcomb3]

I like the Tech 21 Comptortion. Most of the useful settings are in the first 25% of the knob sweep (after that it gets silly), but the sound is very musical. Also works well as a boost and distortion pedal. It can be used as a straight boost, compressor or distortion, or any combination of the three.

There's a compressor built into my Fender Cyber-Deluxe that works very well. The Fender preset settings suck, but I've figured out how to hack into the parameters to dial up some very useful sounds.

For recording I use the t.c. electronic Triple*C rack compressor. Great sounding, great metering, very tweakable and has tons of presets that make great starting points. The three band compression mode is also great for taming problem areas while leaving the rest of the signal untouched.

-Jonathan

[straightblues]

A friend who makes his living playing guitar in Nashville told me how to set up my Dynacomp and I haven't wanted anything else since. I really only use it on country tunes anyway.

Well are you going to share the secret settings with us??????

[Brooks]

i've used one as a solo boost for decades, found my 1st ibanez at a flea market when i was in jr high. later used arion & boss. currently use an aphex punch factory, which is a transparent sounding optical compressor in a stompbox. also like the guyatone, which has a blend switch for adding back the original natural attack that high compression ratios "squash".