Dave Locher
New member
I've been looking for something to give me a solo boost for the dirty channel of my ss Randall amp. I've been using an EQ pedal since the 1990s, bumping the midrange frequencies and the overall volume. It makes the signal fuller, with more compression and sustain. That's all I want. But after reading through this forum for a few weeks I thought maybe I could do better.
So I went to my local music store to try out some pedals, specifically an overdrive or two, a clean boost or two, and a compressor or two. Overdrives did not do it for me AT ALL. Every one I tried just thinned out the signal and/or made it harsh to my ears. I want smooth and creamy sustain, not an ice pick. A couple of them actually lowered the apparent volume of my amp, probably because they cut lows and/or low mids.
So then I tried five or six different clean boosts. The mini Spark came closest to what I was looking for, but it really just sounds a lot like my EQ pedal the way I have it set so I saw no reason to switch. (But if anyone wants a nice warm clean boost that doesn't make the bottom into total mush, I highly recommend that little sucker!)
However, the shop did not have a single compressor in stock! Not one. The guy was visibly surprised when I asked to try a couple out.
So...I lurked around eBay for a while until I found a lightly used Joyo "Dyna Compressor" for $21 shipped. (The bright green one with a white scorpion stenciled on the top for no logical reason.) I chose it because it has separate sustain and attack controls, easy battery access, and it's cheap. I was hoping for a good volume boost along with a bit more sustain AND to knock down the "pweek pweek" sound I get from picking notes really hard with a lot of gain.
Plugged it in last night, fired up my amp and...well...it doesn't really seem to compress much. But I messed around with the controls and found that if I peg the volume control full on AND the sustain control around 9 o'clock or so, I get a decent volume boost and a wee bit of compression. Best I can tell, the "attack" control doesn't seem to do much at all. If I did not know better I would swear this were a low-gain overdrive of some sort.
That might seem like a total fail, but I'm actually quite happy with it as long as the feedback at stage volume isn't insane. It does give me just as much volume bump (or apparent volume bump) as the EQ pedal, but it is a little more full sounding and a little more fuzzy and does give me more sustain. Best of all, the notes fade into feedback in a pleasing way if you hang on long enough. And although it doesn't kill the pick noise, it does not emphasize it like the clean boosts all did. And the hiss isn't bad until you push the sustain knob closer to 10, although I do have a very good noise/signal ratio amp.
I may or may not try a "better" compressor.
Any recommendations for something inexpensive or easy to find used that puts out a fair volume bump but might actually compress the signal more than this thing without creating a wall of hiss? Apparently trying them out locally is just not in the cards for me! The most important factor to me is the volume bump. Unity gain is not of interest to me. My goal is to bring up single notes to the level of a hard-hit chord, not to bring the chords down to the level of single notes.
In the meantime I'd say it's $21 well spent and the worst case scenario is I end up not using it. If I keep it, I'm going to paint it, though, or at least try to get rid of the scorpion with some paint thinner!
So I went to my local music store to try out some pedals, specifically an overdrive or two, a clean boost or two, and a compressor or two. Overdrives did not do it for me AT ALL. Every one I tried just thinned out the signal and/or made it harsh to my ears. I want smooth and creamy sustain, not an ice pick. A couple of them actually lowered the apparent volume of my amp, probably because they cut lows and/or low mids.
So then I tried five or six different clean boosts. The mini Spark came closest to what I was looking for, but it really just sounds a lot like my EQ pedal the way I have it set so I saw no reason to switch. (But if anyone wants a nice warm clean boost that doesn't make the bottom into total mush, I highly recommend that little sucker!)
However, the shop did not have a single compressor in stock! Not one. The guy was visibly surprised when I asked to try a couple out.
So...I lurked around eBay for a while until I found a lightly used Joyo "Dyna Compressor" for $21 shipped. (The bright green one with a white scorpion stenciled on the top for no logical reason.) I chose it because it has separate sustain and attack controls, easy battery access, and it's cheap. I was hoping for a good volume boost along with a bit more sustain AND to knock down the "pweek pweek" sound I get from picking notes really hard with a lot of gain.
Plugged it in last night, fired up my amp and...well...it doesn't really seem to compress much. But I messed around with the controls and found that if I peg the volume control full on AND the sustain control around 9 o'clock or so, I get a decent volume boost and a wee bit of compression. Best I can tell, the "attack" control doesn't seem to do much at all. If I did not know better I would swear this were a low-gain overdrive of some sort.
That might seem like a total fail, but I'm actually quite happy with it as long as the feedback at stage volume isn't insane. It does give me just as much volume bump (or apparent volume bump) as the EQ pedal, but it is a little more full sounding and a little more fuzzy and does give me more sustain. Best of all, the notes fade into feedback in a pleasing way if you hang on long enough. And although it doesn't kill the pick noise, it does not emphasize it like the clean boosts all did. And the hiss isn't bad until you push the sustain knob closer to 10, although I do have a very good noise/signal ratio amp.
I may or may not try a "better" compressor.
Any recommendations for something inexpensive or easy to find used that puts out a fair volume bump but might actually compress the signal more than this thing without creating a wall of hiss? Apparently trying them out locally is just not in the cards for me! The most important factor to me is the volume bump. Unity gain is not of interest to me. My goal is to bring up single notes to the level of a hard-hit chord, not to bring the chords down to the level of single notes.
In the meantime I'd say it's $21 well spent and the worst case scenario is I end up not using it. If I keep it, I'm going to paint it, though, or at least try to get rid of the scorpion with some paint thinner!
