Extensive compressor reviews and FAQ

MXR Limiter: This red box (with attached AC cord) from the late '70s/early '80s is the smoothest and cleanest-sounding pedal from that era I have tried, a real hidden gem. Most of the "vintage" comp pedals you see on Ebay are noisy, lose highs or lows, and squash your tone; but this MXR is very transparent, smooth, and especially low-noise. It imparts a bit of softness to the sound, taking the edge off the highs and the boom out of the lows, so it's a very natural and even sound but it will not suit users who want brightness or fat low end. Otherwise the signal is remarkably uncolored. In spite of the "Limiter" label it seems to work best as a gentle compressor for general signal smoothing; it doesn't actually do a very good job of limiting sharp spikes. If you need to use it for that purpose though, I got decent results by setting the attack and release at their fastest settings. Note that the attack knob turns clockwise from fastest setting to slowest, but the release knob goes "backwards" from slowest to fastest. The envelope is very smooth, and it is easy to forget that this unit is switched on. The footswitch is not true bypass, but the bypass is excellent and clean. Note however that the signal is boosted above unity even in bypass, so you may need to adjust your other gain stages.
 

 
 
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