Hopes and Dreams for a Compressor

[MKeditor]

I can't think of a piece of gear that has the range of agendas people have of it as a compressor. Some what to use it like a drive pedal. Some want to to squash, like in a funk tone. Some don't understand it all and some hate compressors. One approach is to have it at unity gain, soften the peaks and add sustain. The best example of this is in session ace, Tim Pierce's video at 2:38.

I find this elusive at times with the compressors in the magic black box.

Which compressor do you use for this?

 

[RLD]

I'm one of those "compressor always on" guys.
1st in chain (after wah) and I use the Dynamics Processor.
Love the extra zing it gives Marshall type amps on the edge of breakup.
Cleans with a hint of hair and compression is where I live.

 

[JWDubois]

 

[unix-guy]

The LA2A is an optical compressor.

I'm an always on compressor guy, too. I used the Optical for a long time but switched to the JFET after it was added.

I also set Mix around 60%...

 

[My name is mud]

I try to use compressor at the very minimum. With the axe I use some in clean tones to have no digital peak, as a limiter in a way. I never use them in dist tones . Everything is already compressed everywhere, in records these and that . The compressor remove the life and the dynamic to me. I agree that well used in some music genre it sound cool, but not for what I play / like.

The sustain is in the fingers too

 

[mr_fender]

Depends on the amp. Many amps are quite compressed sounding naturally, especially high gain amps. I do like a little squish with clean tones to add more sustain and fatness. I sometimes use the Out Comp in the amp block for that.

 

[bread]

I use a Cali76 Stacked in the front which is always on. No other compressors

 

[marsonic]

The only compressor I use with the Fractal is the Feedback mode of the Amp Dynamics page. I turn it down when I play loud, but I never play at 110dB, so it's always on a little. Plus the amp itself.

I also don't run pure clean amps. My clean sound is a Tweed Twin model on ~8 (out of 10, not 12) with the guitar on about 4-5. It's already compressing/clipping a bit, certainly when I dig in. It's just a different way to do it, but I've always had better luck turning the amp up a bit compared to actually using a compressor pedal or running the amp sound into a rack/daw compressor.

 

[unix-guy]

Taking the transients off before the amp with a compressor (as well as potentially boosting the input) surely produces different results than compression from the amp that (I think) is mostly coming from the output stage (power amp).

Similar to pre vs post EQ...

 

[marsonic]

Taking the transients off before the amp with a compressor (as well as potentially boosting the input) surely produces different results than compression from the amp that (I think) is mostly coming from the output stage (power amp).

Similar to pre vs post EQ...

Pre vs Post EQ is kind of a different thing. It changes the behavior of the nonlinearities in the amp....similar to pre/de-emphasis filters that don't change the overall tonality themselves but do change the overtones produced by nonlinear things between them.

And, yes, the results are different. That's why I prefer amp compression. But, FWIW, most compressors aren't fast enough to really take off the beginning of the transient. Pushing the amp into clipping is. That's part of how they're different. It becomes just preference.

 

[rossipedia]

I don't even bother with a compressor most of the time because I predominantly play with gain at 11.

But I do like to compress the fk out of my cleans, still haven't landed on a single one just yet