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Looper's Delight
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Thanks to everyone for the excellent information and advice on using a compression pedal with guitar. I'm no effects newbie but I've never actually used a compression pedal before to play "normal" guitar :) For those that wanted to knwo and to possilby help others in the same situation here's what I ended up doing: My goal was to even out the overall levels. I almost always have an overdrive or distorion somewhere early in the pedal chain and then that feeds either a wah or an envelope filter. When I put on the envelope filter there is a drastic reduction in overall volume and some serious peaks with certain settings so I wanted to get somethig to "tame" that but still allow the overall volume and tone to get through. I had an old Ibanez soundtank pedal as well as the UE400 and UE303B multieffects units from the TS9 series days but the soundtank just didn't have much oomf and the other ones had a bit more hiss than I was hoping (and in the case of the UE400 only a "sustain" and "Output level" control. After reading a ton of reviews and talking to some people I decided to give the DOD Milkbox a try. this is a very low end pedal ($40 new) I know but I figured I really don't know enough or play enough to warrent a Keeley/Ross thing or some boutique pedal at this point and I want to experiment form the ground up. It took a few hours tonight but I think I've got what I was seraching for and the Milkbox does a surprisingly good job after all. I'm running a chorus first (Boss CE3) in a Keeley Ibanex TS9DX(my favorite oveerdrive bar none) and then have a wah (right now a roland PW10, that may change) and old DOD FX25 envelope filter. The Milkbox compressior is last in the chain which then feeds the amp. What ending up making it all work was turning up the attack to about 75% and adding *just* a bit (maybe 25%) of compression. I matched my clean and distortion levels so there isn't a huge jump in volume there and then adjusted the overal level I wanted with the compressor (about 65%). This got me all the tone from the TS9DX but a stable overall volume with or without the wah/filter stuff. I did noticed if I turned down the attack to 50% or less the compressor just sucked the sparkle from the distortion or chorus and the overall sound was very dull and dead. Similarly if I turned the compression or volume up too much it introduced distortion or hiss respectively and made things quite annoying. All in all the cheapass Dod Milkbox did a great job of leaving what i wanted, boosting what I needed, and not adding too much of what I didn't like. I know compression in general is a very subjective and qualitative thing but I certainly DO hear a difference using it and it makes everything overall "work" better. YMMV. Again thanks for all the advice. I'm looking forward to trying this rig out live soon and will try it with a more radical setup (fuzz, EH microsynth, fraky modulation pedals) soon to see if it holds up for experimental as well as vanilla stuff. ___________________________________________________________________ HELP WANTED PRODUCTIONS - Http://www.HelpWantedProductions.com "Bringing you the best in Organic Electronic music since we started..." Home of the Unusual Instrument and Recording Gallery with pictures and info of Tube recorders, Omnichords, weird guitars, Casios, and more.