Extensive compressor reviews and FAQ

Malekko Comp: Malekko Heavy Industries has recently put out a line of several simple pedals in the very tiny (40 mm x 93 mm) Hammond 1590A housing. Very few compressors have been produced in such a tiny package, so that's the main reason to be interested in this one.
 
The important thing to know about this pedal is that it steeply rolls off both highs and lows. I often do spectrum analysis of the pedals I test, but I've avoided posting images in my reviews, in order to keep the pages fast-loading. In this particular case I felt it was something you'd appreciate being able to see, to really know what I mean:
 

 
The green line is bypass, and the other lines are different settings of the "Sens" knob, from minimum (purple) to maximum (blue). As a simplified rough reading, the signal at 50 Hz and 3 KHz is about half the strength of the peak in the middle, and it keeps dropping from there.
 
On the plus side, cutting the highs means there is very little noise! Also the tone is otherwise quite clean and uncolored. The action is light to moderate, and fairly smooth and unobtrusive. It will not do peak limiting or funky squish effects. Actually this would be a great pedal for a guitarist wanting to drive their amp with a warm/dark boost during a solo, as there is a good amount of gain available, so you could look at it as a mid-boost with some compression.
 
As you'd expect in such a small pedal, there is no LED metering and it only has two knobs, "Sens" which seems to be a gain into a fixed threshold, and "Level" for the output volume. The construction quality is good, and the sparkly red paint job is pretty. The circuit components are SMT (miniature) so it would not be easy to mod in any way. It runs on standard 9V DC and the footswitch is true bypass.
 
Price in USD: new $100, used $60-$80.
 
or on Amazon
 

 
 
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