Extensive compressor reviews and FAQ

Maxon CP9 Pro+: Excellent! What a nice surprise. This pedal has low noise, very clear uncolored tone, no loss of highs or lows, and smooth action. It's also quite versatile, as the threshold control makes it compatible with any instrument output level and the ratio control covers a very wide usable range. It is more effective, with fewer artifacts, than most other pedals. A minor complaint is the attack is fixed, and will allow the initial transient spike through if you peg it with a hard note; so even though it is capable of an infinite ratio for limiting, there may be some times when a quick initial spike may pass. Another oddity is the amount of gain available- at compression ratios below 10:1, the output level is higher than unity even with the Gain knob at minimum; turning up the gain results in an incredibly hot signal. So this pedal would also make a killer booster for overdriving your amp, but otherwise you will need to reduce the input gain on on your amp to avoid clipping. Maxon claims the footswitch is true bypass, but I'm not 100% sure of that; either way though it is a very clean bypass; and it actually requires a strong step to engage/bypass. On the plus side, the sound is so clean and natural that I would just leave this pedal on all the time, which make the footswitch and the gain level non-issues. This pedal now makes it to the top ranking next to the Demeter and EBS. I'd say it has better clarity and range of compression than the EBS and Demeter, but is less "fattening" tonally than they are. The attack is about the same as the EBS; the Demeter's faster attack catches more of the initial transient spikes, but for the same reason the Maxon is more articulate, less soft sounding. It takes a standard Boss-type 9VDC power supply, and it has an internal "charge pump" circuit which raises the operating voltage to 18V, for higher headroom (less distortion). Some people get confused, thinking it needs an 18V supply, but that's not the case. Any normal pedal supply will work.
 

 
 
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