Boy_Narf wrote:Compression hey? One of the best parts of my bass is how dynamic and responsive it is.
Oh I love dynamics. Don't go thinking though that compression just '
flattens' everything though. Used wrongly, yes of course it can. But you'd get much closer to the truth by changing the second last letter to 'r' as in '
flatters'! Carefully used good quality compression can and does flatter your sounds. Put simply it can (almost always!) make you sound better!
Of course most all valve amps give a fair degree of natural compression, so that you can get totally used to it and forget that fact. There the 'natural compression' (partly from the valves, largely too from the output transformer) is
seen as a good thing! I use a lot of solid state bass gear too though when external compression can make a real positive difference to the feel, sound and consistency of your sounds, and actually positively affect your playing too.
You may or may not realise this but on virtually every modern professional recording the electric bass sounds will have been carefully compressed. Far from flattening the signal it can actually give it real punch in a mix, and is often able to positively affect the tonality as well as dynamics. For example by varying the compression attack time - how fast the compression kicks in - you'll get really good fine control over the 'attack' of your notes which really does affect their impact, and can be like an extra tonal control as well as dynamic. The release time can work here too - set longer the compression will still be there for the beginning of the next note giving further shaping options. And apart from adding sustain compressors are great for sorting out things like slightly uneven string balance and playing, also evening out the badly balanced lows and highs you get on some instruments.
Of course fully featured comps can seem (and sometimes be) complicated to set up and use. But there are also some very good comps which are very easy and intuitive to use.
One great sounding studio classic only has two knobs, 'gain' and 'peak reduction'. And the so called 'make up gain' simply gives control of the overall output volume for different levels of compression. Couldn't be much simpler, but many users would rather lose some body parts than their LA3A.
But a fully featured comp (like the wee
MXR Bass comp I use) gives you control over more parameters such as:
Threshold' (the level it'll start compressing, often an input level control)
Compression Ratio (how strongly it compresses)
attack and release times (how quickly or slowly the compression starts and stops)
(make up) gain to give control of the overall signal.
These all interact to give everything from very subtle to very powerful control over your instrument signals.
I'm a huge fan of that MXR comp, it works like a fully featured studio comp, and yes that row of LEDS really is genius. It really works so well that unless I'm pushing a valve amp's output section harder than I usually get a chance to these days it is almost always getting used. Basically an 'always on' because I can almost always audibly improve my sounds with it, and not just for bass. For guitar too it can add lovely feel and sustain to even clean sounds and also give different textures to drive sounds, but set right without killing the dynamics I love. I use very different settings for my electric nylon string from steel string electric, and my '51 reissue 'P' bass p/up is so punchy that it can overdrive almost any input when hit hard, so for solid state it gets compressed - period. My U-bass has very different needs but again I can always get great control over the sounds and sustain with careful comp tweaking.
I've also just grabbed an Xotic SP comp which is a brilliant little thing - both effective and great sounding, also really simple and intuitive to use. Just trust your ears when setting it and you won't go wrong. I was wanting another comp so that I didn't always have to change settings if using very different instruments and it was either that one or another identical MXR unit. I always prefer to have different options available rather then identical duplicates so and I'm glad this one came up here recently:
http://forum.orangeamps.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=53575" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
So yeah... compression. Used right it gives you great
control of dynamics
without killing them!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_ra ... n#Limiting" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Andy.
it might be worth trying an eq pedal and seeing if you could poke through that way, I know the mxr 10 band is fairly inexpensive and works really well
