After almost a year of not buying any new pedals, I picked up a cool little compressor yesterday!
It's a Barber Tone Press.
I've been looking for a nice compressor pedal for a while, and I heard about these back when I worked at GC. The usual suspects (i.e. Boss compressors,
MXR stuff) never really did it for me in the compressor department, they were either too noisy or squashed too much, etc.
I like compression for the effect it provides more than evening out dynamics, and as someone on here recently said, if used right it provides a nice professional touch to the sound, and that’s what I like to use them for as well. Putting a Strat on position 2 or 4 and kicking in a compressor and a dash of verb is a favorite sound of mine.
This pedal’s a little bit unique in that it allows you to blend the dry signal in with the compressed signal to your taste, so your dynamics don’t get hit too bad with higher settings but you still get the compression you want, plus it’s veeeeery low noise. I’m told the TC Electronic Sustainer did a similar thing, but I’ve never seen one of those.
Anyways… if you like the sound of compression or want to get a compression pedal but can’t really find one that works well for you (the situation I was in) I recommend looking into this pedal. It’s kind of a boutique piece but it’s much less expensive than a Keeley Compressor… I paid $150 after tax for mine and it’s brand new.
If you find one of these, check it out!!!
It's a Barber Tone Press.
I've been looking for a nice compressor pedal for a while, and I heard about these back when I worked at GC. The usual suspects (i.e. Boss compressors,
MXR stuff) never really did it for me in the compressor department, they were either too noisy or squashed too much, etc.
I like compression for the effect it provides more than evening out dynamics, and as someone on here recently said, if used right it provides a nice professional touch to the sound, and that’s what I like to use them for as well. Putting a Strat on position 2 or 4 and kicking in a compressor and a dash of verb is a favorite sound of mine.
This pedal’s a little bit unique in that it allows you to blend the dry signal in with the compressed signal to your taste, so your dynamics don’t get hit too bad with higher settings but you still get the compression you want, plus it’s veeeeery low noise. I’m told the TC Electronic Sustainer did a similar thing, but I’ve never seen one of those.
Anyways… if you like the sound of compression or want to get a compression pedal but can’t really find one that works well for you (the situation I was in) I recommend looking into this pedal. It’s kind of a boutique piece but it’s much less expensive than a Keeley Compressor… I paid $150 after tax for mine and it’s brand new.
If you find one of these, check it out!!!