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talk to me about compressors

3K views 19 replies 15 participants last post by  budda 
#1 ·
Im thinking of getting one and i play a lot of death metal and a lot of clean and mid gain stuff in my band - a broad spectrum.

what are the benefits?

im thinking it will smooth out my distorted tones and make cleans and single note stuff jump out a bit more?
 
#4 ·
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I hate them personally for high gain tones. You'll hear the sound of your hand sliding on the strings more. For cleans though its fine. I think most people use keeley 4 knobs.
 
#5 ·
If you want even less dynamics in your high gain, then a compressor is the way to go. It's guaranteed to suck the life out of your tone! It'll make a VHT sound just like a Powerball I.

For cleans, a little compression can help even the sound out, for more than a little smoothing you could even the sound out by playing with better control of your dynamics.


(In case you aren't picking up on it.... I'm not a fan of compression on guitars)
 
#7 ·
I think the best place for compressors on guitars are when used with low- to mid-gain sounds and you want sort of a juicy lead sound. Think Pink Floyd. Gilmour abused an MXR Dynacomp for much of his career. Check out the intro licks in Shine on You Crazy Diamond for a pretty obvious example. Very fat and "even" Strat sound with a lot of sustain.
 
#10 ·
I am not fond of compressors with high gain tones, but love them with clean tones. You can take a bright clean tone, slap a compressor on it and totally mellow out the tone with out losing any clarity. It gives you a rounder, more bell like tone.
 
#12 ·
Compressors can be wonderful, or they can ruin the sound of something, and not everyone knows the difference when they're working with them. Very mild compression on clean tone can be great (if the amp's not doing enough of it on its own), and heavy compression can be an interesting sound sometimes, but if you go too far, everything sounds loud all the time, and your ears get really tired.
 
#15 ·
I'm thinking of picking up an mxr comp to mess around with for clean stuff and for bass. They seem to be on a lot of people's pedalboards. I really need one for bass, it should help make the volume a bit more consistent when I'm using my fingers. I'm looking forward to messing around with it on guitar too though.
 
#17 · (Edited)
I like Rane DC24s for my bass. I don't really use compression on guitars unless I'm trying to replicate a certain tone for someone. I find using the right amount of gain and clean playing is good enough for me.

Thats basically the only cheap hardware multiband compressor. FEA labs makes a couple but ive never tried them. And only the higher model allows you to adjust the crossover.
 
#18 ·
FWIW my Recto sounds in the Axe FX always sounded better with a boosted studio compressor in front rather than any of the overdrive pedal models, but that's just from my experience.

I'd love to try a dbx in front of a triple rec or roadster and see what happens.
 
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