Extensive compressor reviews and FAQ

Boss CS-3: I had seen this guy "Humphrey Mods" advertising on Ebay for a little while, and the reviews I'd seen of his CS-3 mods were very positive, so I decided to take a gamble. What he does is he takes a Boss CS-3 and replaces a number of the components for wider frequency range and lower noise, and replaces the red LED with a larger blue one. I popped the hood, and it's pretty clean in there. There were only three or four solder points that looked a bit unprofessional, but they are solid.
 
It has a very smooth, natural action with almost no artifacts (though the "stock" version can distort a bit on bass). It actually does a fairly good job of clean peak limiting, as it uses a high compression ratio. The Attack knob offers a wide spread of attack-time options, and using a slower attack can really help to keep your notes from losing their articulation when being compressed.
 
The CS-3 doesn't lose any highs as long as the tone knob is above 12:00. The Tone knob controls a "tilting EQ", meaning if you turn it to the left it boosts lows and cuts highs, and if you turn it to the right it cuts lows and boosts highs. The tone and action of this pedal reminds me a lot of the old Ibanez CP9, only with better sound quality. It emphasizes the higher harmonics and restrains the volume of the lower ones, so your tone has more "bite", but less "oomph" at the bottom end. So it would not be suited to somebody who is all about the massive lows, but it will definitely help you cut through the mix.
 
This pedal mod is NOT as noise-free as Humphrey and other reviewers claim. However at modest Sustain settings (like 10:00 or lower), the noise level can be low. But as with most comps, when you turn up the sustain for greater squish the noise increases quickly. This pedal is capable of extreme squish, if you can handle the accompanying noise. At all settings it does have the slight "swell" of noise floor when your sustained note trails away, but it's not so noticeable at lower Sustain settings. I have spent a silly amount of money on compressors in the last couple of years, and so far this one is seriously competing with all of them for day-to-day usability. The footswitch is not true bypass, but the bypassed tone is fairly transparent.
 
For best bass response you may need to replace the input capacitor with a higher value, .22uF or larger. The standard (non-bass) Humphrey-mod version doesn't include that mod. The stock CS-3 loses a lot of low end and it is prone to distortion. In my opinion, the CS-3 needs to be modded to be usable on bass. Here is a link to the mods.
 

 
 
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