Compressor pedals? What are they for?

[ehdwuld]

Re: Compressor pedals? What are they for?

I play without a pick
the compressor helps even out my picking and brings the level closer to that of a picked note

if I leave it too high I loose some dynamics

[Archer_of_Fish]

Re: Compressor pedals? What are they for?

I run 2 on my board. A Wampler to give a wee bit of pop and sweeten my sound, that is always on. I also have a Walrus Deep Six that is set to be pretty squishy which gives clean playing a pop.

This is a Wampler vid but Brent does a good job showing what a compressor will do for you



These are also great videos

[jeromey127]

Re: Compressor pedals? What are they for?

Thanks everyone, the feedback helped tremendously, as well as giving me some huge ideas with my music/audio engineering ventures... Thanks!!

[TwilightOdyssey]

Re: Compressor pedals? What are they for?

No problem.

[p4vl]

Re: Compressor pedals? What are they for?

What about non-pedal pieces of gear where compression is present? Some pickups, distortion/OD/Fuzz pedals and gain channels are said to be 'compressed'; I'm still not 100% sure what that means or if it's good or bad.

[TwilightOdyssey]

Re: Compressor pedals? What are they for?

It doesn't mean either good or bad.

[p4vl]

Re: Compressor pedals? What are they for?

It doesn't mean either good or bad.

Bad phrasing on my part. What does over/under compression sound like in a hot humbucker, a distortion pedal and/or a gain channel in a tube amp (in each case, I'm talking about a high gain)?

I ask because with a compression pedal if you want more or less compression or want your tone to be compressed in a specific way, you can dial it in. What does a gain channel with too much compression sound like?

[ehdwuld]

Re: Compressor pedals? What are they for?

thats kinda hard to describe
but when you add gain
any gain really
you will hear the highs and lows get closer together
squished, if you will

most "gain" pedals use compression as part of the recipe

[TwilightOdyssey]

Re: Compressor pedals? What are they for?

Ah, gotcha. A good indication of how compressed your sound is can be discerned by the LACK of dynamics. Try playing softly. Does the sound clean up? Play medium, then hard. Does the VOLUME increase, or just the gain? Or neither; does it stay the same. The less dynamic tange you have, the more conpressed it is.

[koshikas]

Re: Compressor pedals? What are they for?

would it be right to say most effects add certain amount of compression.

[TwilightOdyssey]

Re: Compressor pedals? What are they for?

would it be right to say most effects add certain amount of compression.

I would say yes to this. Anything that eats up your available headroom is, ipso facto, compressing the signal.

[Chickenwings]

Re: Compressor pedals? What are they for?

This thread can only really be answered by playing thru the gear and experimenting with the new palette of timbres and feels. Studio compression is one thing, but how it feels to play using a compressor in your instruments signal chain or even getting compression from other means such as overdrive or square wave distortion is not something that can be understood by words alone. The use of compression affects how you strike the notes, how you phrase and even the selection of chord voicings and whether your play legato, staccato etc. Knowing what the gear does mechanically, and understanding how it can be used expressively are two different universes.

[treyhaislip]

Re: Compressor pedals? What are they for?

I'd say compression in a mix is like salt in a meal. None at all and you'll notice that something's missing. Too much, and it ruins the damned thing. Often modern mixing and mastering will use compression to leave the music is like a spaghetti dinner where all the sauce with salt.

+1 to this. Great posts here, compression was and is hard for me to explain but something I like to use.

[Jeremiah]

Re: Compressor pedals? What are they for?

Pretty much anything that distorts or overdrives the signal will also compress it, as distortion essentially happens when the ability of a gain stage to reproduce the signal accurately is exceeded, causing the signal peaks to be "clipped" - literally cut off.