Extensive compressor reviews and FAQ

Moen Uni-Comp: This pedal has only recently started showing up on Ebay in the US, and I think it is a strong contender among the cheaper pedals out there. The compression action is very smooth and natural, with no artifacts. There is hardly any noise. The construction quality seems solid. The one major quirk of it is the "Bias" knob, which is actually a tilting EQ: turn it to the left and it boosts the lows while cutting the highs, turn it to the right and it cuts lows while boosting highs. The knob setting that seems the most "flat" for a bass guitar is about 1:00, but even with that the lowest and highest frequencies are rolled off. In other words the EQ is a bandpass, only allowing a certain "window" of frequencies through. So that's bad news for a user who wants transparency and the fullest frequency range. But the good news is if you are the type of player who rolls back the tone knob on your bass, or turns down the tweeter on your cab, you can get a fantastic fat warm old-school tone with tons of lows by turning the Bias knob to the bass side just a bit. The one other annoyance is there is no control for adjusting the input level- so some instruments may have output too hot or too low to get best results from this pedal. There is a decent range of compression available, although even at max it's not quite a peak limiter. There is a lot of extra output gain available via the 'level' knob, so you can use this to overdrive your amp quite well if you want. The footswitch is true bypass.
 

 
 
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