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Compression is the most-misunderstood pedal on the board

KT
@kobu.tinker
6 weeks agoAsked in Tone Talk
I keep seeing people put a compressor at the END of their chain, after delay and reverb, as a 'limiter' to even out the mix. That's not what a guitar compressor does. That's what a studio bus comp does, and it's a completely different circuit. A guitar compressor (Ross, Dyna, Keeley clone, whatever) is a sustainer. It pushes up the tail of a note. You put it BEFORE drive, before chorus, before everything except maybe a tuner and a wah. Run it after a delay and you're sustaining the wet signal, which collapses your repeats into a single held tone. It's a mistake every time. Signal chain on my Jaguar -> AC15 rig: 1. Tuner 2. Compressor (Cali76) 3. Boost 4. Drive 5. Chorus (CE-2W) 6. Delay 7. Reverb Compress before chorus, never after. The chorus modulates pitch by milliseconds. If you compress that, you're flattening the modulation that's supposed to make the pedal work. Anyone running it differently and getting a result you actually like, I want to hear why.
4 replies

4 replies

  • LF
    @lo.flannery6 weeks ago
    Agree on the chain but I'll push back on 'never after'. On certain studio dates I run a soft-knee comp at the end of the wet chain specifically to tame a long delay tail when I want the repeats to feel like one continuous sound instead of distinct hits. It's not for sustain, it's for glue. Wouldn't do it live, wouldn't do it on a pedalboard comp, but on a UA console it absolutely works.
  • MA
    @mira.alves5 weeks ago
    This is the post I send students who ask me about comp placement. I'd add one thing: a lot of people think they need a compressor because their picking is uneven. They don't. They need to practice. A comp fixes a dynamic problem, not a technique problem.
  • SV
    @sam.varney5 weeks ago
    On bass it's slightly different. I run mine first because the bass picks up dynamic spikes a guitar doesn't, but I run a tube comp for color, not the spongy guitar pedal kind. Anyway, agree with everything you said about the chorus thing. People modulating a compressed signal sounds like a kazoo.
  • TW
    @thelma.weller5 weeks ago
    I don't run a comp at all. Drop C# Jazzmaster into a Twin, the pickups are already compressed by the time they hit the amp. If I added a Ross in front I'd lose the only dynamic range I've got. Different rig, different rules.

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