Extensive compressor reviews and FAQ

Guyatone BL2: This is a bass limiter from their "Micro" series, and it's a little pedal about 2/3 the size of a Boss. It actually sounds pretty good. The tone and action are similar to the LMB-3, with good frequency range and fairly low noise, but there are a couple of audible artifacts. The can be a little pop when the threshold is hit hard, and also there can be kind of a "rustling-sounding" modulation on the bottom end when you slam it hard with a big low-frequency spike. But on the other hand, it will actually stop those spikes from getting through, which a lot of more expensive limiters don't do so successfully. It has a switch for two attack settings, both of which sound good, as well as level and threshold knobs. The threshold knob is "backwards", in that a "0" setting is the highest threshold and a "10" is the lowest. But I guess it makes sense if you think of the 0-10 as "least effect" to "most effect". The construction of this pedal is ultra cheap: plastic jacks mounted to the circuitboard, stamped sheet-metal housing, held together with a rubber ring instead of screws. The footswitch is flimsy and not true bypass. When I opened the pedal up to look at the insides, and then put it back together, it stopped working. So I opened and re-closed it up again, and it resumed working fine. In spite of that, because it is small and effective, I use it on my pedalboard right after an envelope filter that puts out a crazy volume spike, since I keep that in an fx loop with a separate footswitch anyway.
 

 
 
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