Re: Looking for Compressor Suggestions

Posted by induction on Jun 27, 2013; 7:51pm
URL: http://guitar-fx-layouts.238.s1.nabble.com/Looking-for-Compressor-Suggestions-tp4684p4686.html

It depends a lot on what you want it for.
 
- Orange Squeezer: retains the pick attack, so they sound clicky, which is great for chicken picking, but won't give you a super-squashed Chili Peppers sound or a metal solo sound.

- Dynacomp: for either of the above sounds. lots of country players also use it for chicken picking.  apparently noisy as hell (I don't have one, so I can't say for sure).  The Engineer's Thumb allegedly can get you the same sounds with much less noise.

- optical: cheap compressor/hollis flatline/etc.  Great for volume leveling on clean settings to bring out the subtlety of your playing.  My cheap compressor has much more squish at high settings than I expected.

This list is far from comprehensive.

I personally use compressors in three ways: volume leveling clean (chicken picking/strumming/finger picking/etc.), volume leveling post-dirt (so you can roll back your volume knob for clean tones without getting too quiet), and boosting pre-dirt (to put your solos into the sweet spot of your dirt boxes).  I can use the cheap compressor for all of these, but it's nice to have dedicated boxes for each function so you don't have to change the settings all the time.

The thing is, you really have to play through them to see what their strengths and weaknesses are and whether they'll get you where you want to go.  The practical effect and feel of a specific compressor can be difficult to put into words.  I would say just build one and see if you like it.  It will invariably have shortcomings, so you can build another one to fill in the gaps.  Soon you'll end up with 5 or more different types.  I've built an orange squeezer and a cheap compressor.  The Engineer's Thumb and the Philosopher's Tone are both on my to do list.