Re: Using a compressor to increase sustain?
Yeah, you can use a compressor to increase sustain.
Sorry if the following is review. . .
The guitar compressors are more like "companders" (compressor expanders). They bring down the level of really hot signals and boost the level of quiet signals. This can give you the impression that the signal is played at a certain volume for a longer period of time than the guitar does when the pedal is off. As the string's vibration naturally decays and the sound level decreases, the pedal then increases the gain to try and keep the heard signal at the same level as the first attack. The greater the level of compression, the more the original signal is squished, and as it get's quieter, the more the quiet signal is made louder. The 2 knob "Dyna Comp" type pedals do all that (among other things) with one knob. The trade off ofr the increased sustain is that your expressive dynamics tend to get shrunk down to one volume level. Your quieter pick attacks are just about as loud as your heaviest pick attacks.
In my setup, I run 2 compressors, one right after the other (hope this doesn't confuse the issue for you). The first one in the chain is set to medium compression/sustain and no volume boost. The second one in the chain is set up for the maximum amount of volume boost the pedal can give and light compression/sustain (sort of like a clean boost pedal with just a bit of compression added to it).
The second one in the chain get's used to increase the drive of my overdrive pedals and still give me pretty good dynamics (not a lot of squishing the singnal, but a bit more sustain). I can play rhythm and light leads with it. I then pop in the first compressor which does compress the signal a good amount, and the 2 together give me a gain boost and pretty long sustain with a minimum of noise from either pedal. I can then set the overdrive pedal's gain to a pretty low level. This gives me light crunch from the OD pedal, the second compressor gives me a bit more crunch and a bit more sustain; the first compressor in my chain gives me a lot more sustain (combined with the second one in the chain which is already boosting the level of my signal and compressing it a bit).
Right now, on my main pedalboard, I'm running a Boss CS3 (higher compression, no volume boost) into a Marshall ED-1 Compressor (lower compression, volume boost).
On a second smaller pedalboard, I'm running another Marshall ED-1 Compressor (higher compression, no volume boost) Barber TonePress (lower compression, volume boost).
Though they sound pretty different, the basic effect is the same.
Brett
