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Had a play with the new MXR Compressor. Question about settings...


1976fenderhead
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So I played with this pedal and an active bass for a while in a shop today. Really loved the sound of it, however I noticed something weird... I started by setting it so that the LEDs would light just up to the yellow, to avoid distortion with maximum compression (and I noticed if I increased the input and all LEDs lit, I could hear some distortion).

So what I found weird is this: if I set it so that the open E affects the LEDs like that, I get just a couple of LEDs lighting up on the open A and nothing at all when playing anywhere on the D and G strings. I also can't hear the compression (because it's not really acting) on those strings. So it sounded lovely on the lower half of the E string, I tried several settings with the Attack and Release and Ratio and could hear the difference and pick my favourites, but above that register, it didn't seem like it was doing much at all! Am I doing something wrong? If not, this pedal is in dire need of a dual band setting!

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when you play without compression do you perceive the D and G strings as being quieter?

It sounds like maybe you have a very bassy sound, and at the moment you have the compressor set to tame that bassy boom but leave the rest un-touched. If you're after the opposite then yeh a multi band would be the way to go.

It seems unusual to me that you'd see such a massive difference between notes on the compressor, but I do tend to have a very "even" sound right accross my bass.

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The compressor behaves like this because the E string is much louder than the other strings - fix this by decreasing the bass or increasing the mids/treble on the bass. Could also tilt the pickup to move it closer to the higher (pitch) strings and/or moev it away from the E string. This will result in more even compression over the strings - then fix the EQ using the amp controls.

That's what I'd do anyway!

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