Compressors: Do I Need One?

Oh guys crawling here by far the most misunderstood and confusing effect guitars come across is compression even regular users are often unclear but what actually does know what benefits it has for their sound the information we get is also very conflicting we'll hear one voice it's 100% totally completely essential for every pedal board ever well others will say it's pointless and not worth worrying about the truth is that I can press those exceptionally useful tool but it's far from being universally essential so that leaves us with the question do I even need one well let's dig deeper and see if we can find the answer what does a compressor do ensure a compressor reduces the dynamic range of your signal takes a load of stones and brings a level down or taking the quietest ones and bring the level up compressing the signal this has the effect of making your playing more even from a volume perspective the relation of a discernible difference being powerful strong chords and lately Peck single notes leveling out the volumes this way also reduces the initial attack transients of your notes taking away much of the sharp bright spike that sometimes undesirable it also adds clean sustain instead of the notes dying off quickly the compressor continues to left the tail of the note as it feeds on it to be audible for much longer compression is also used as a way to amplify an audio signal without risk of clipping or distorting the waveform and it's just in post-production for these reasons the trade-off between volume and dynamic range has been a raging debate between sent engineers or some tame note but let's get back to guitars do compressors work better with certain guitars Cayne disorder compressors tend to pair well with bright sounding single coil equipped guitars compression teams that heart attack the singer coasts have while adding sustain and thickness to otherwise than notes some compressors are cited as being dark sounding as well to peeling them up with a very breaks in the guitar like at alias track and yield pleasurable results dark sounding humbucker equipped guitars another hand work less well humbuckers are already thicker sounding sustain better and don't have the heart attack of single coils this is because humbuckers are already intrinsically slightly compressed and adding - compression doesn't sound all that great now that's not to say you can't use compression effectively alongside humbuckers you'll have to say it a bit differently but compress Oh certainly do have a preferential lean towards a single core guitar for what styles of music is compression useful compressors are often used and stables the music with fast consistent playing is required particularly those that use clean stones and have a mixture of chordal and single note passes like funk and country in country music fast playing which incorporates significant use of hammer-ons and pull-offs alongside techniques like check and pecking which combine the fast alternation being Peck and fingers even exceptionally difficult to maintain a consistent volume levels a compressor helps here because it gives all the notes and these fast runs an equal standing and prevents any of the quiet ones from being lost amidst a flurry of notes funk quite often is a high dependence on rapid rhythmic playing until laced with single notes these single notes are essential for highlighting the melody and the movement of the music without a compressor they can often be much quieter than the redneck strumming that surrounds them while assisting these individual notes to be haired the compressor squashes the rhythmic playing allowing it to set a little bit farther back in the song and be less jarring to the listener compressors are also hugely popular for bass guitars it's often far more important for a bass guitar to be haired than a test exhibit dynamics so compressors become an exceptionally useful tool for making sure that every note is as loud as all the others especially if you're playing with fingers or slapping so far I've only mentioned styles of music which largely use a clean sound but compressors can be used effectively alongside distortion and overdrive so long as you use it carefully distortion adds compression itself that's why fast legato runs hammer ons and tapping legs also much better the more you turn up the game the compression that distortion brings with it where we'll do all the volume changes add sustain and generally mix that kind of playing work but let's say you want to add consistency and volume and increase sustain without paling more gain on top of your sound well you can use a compressor as a boost but what's better the less again you're using so if you want to boost end to a sustaining solo from a light overdrive crunch tone then I'll be the perfect application for a good compressor if you're using lots of gain for hard rock and heavy metal sounds the compressor isn't going to do any good Squatch in this signal fire just isn't a good idea and if you're playing blues then it's pretty much essential for the feel and emotion of the music the people go from very quiet to very loud using your picking dynamics and you can't are controls using a compressor would only kill that magic is there already compression in my signal most probably yes as previously stated humbuckers and naturally slight the compression if using active pickups that compress the point of stupidity a lot of gain and that comes with a lot of compression using a valve app running it hot and this compression there too as valves approach the maximum volume they start to compress the signal and order to get more amplification it's part of what still revered by the cranked valve torn out loud volumes the speakers and your cab have a dynamic range reduced another signature of compression so are they a compressor and talk of all of that as a recipe for disaster as a metal guitars I've got to great lengths to introduce them at compression and my signal and retain my dynamic range so these are things to think about or you start adding a compressor are there problems with using compressors most certainly although most of those problems are massaged tributed compressors harshest critics will often tell you that compressors are noisy that's not the case if you've experienced one crippling noise while using a compressor that is not the compressor that's at fault it's the rest of your signal compressors left the volume of quiet sounds that's all the quiet zones including all the hess and noise that haynes at the bottom of your signal if you're also using distortion then adding a compressor is only gonna make the noise floor doubly as obvious want to use a noise gate to rectify that issue where you're really going to make the situation worse remember noise gates work most effectively if this signal is as clean as possible if you've already raised the level of your noise floor using a compressor then there's not enough deference and volume between the noise and the noise for the noise hit detail which is which you'll have to set the threshold so higher the noise gate starts to chew into your signal but again this isn't the fault of the compressor this is the fault of your terrible ability to understand and set up your equipment so do I need one armed with all that information you should know but make a judgement for yourself on whether or not a compressor is right for you but let's recap compressors are great with single coils for funky country and bass are not necessarily essential perfect for adding sustain without gain and boosting is possible to also great for post-production and recording purposes compressors are not as useful for music that relies on large changes and dynamics such as blues or snails that use a lot of distortion that only make noisy signals more obvious and the render are noise get useless sure I'm glad I've got through all that information next time we're going to talk features set up and do a bit of a comparison between this vintage Max and compressor and TC Electronics modern hypergravity which is simply stunning so if you're interested in seeing that video when it comes out then you can hit the subscribe button and you'll be alerted of all the content as it happens also available on all social media and you leave a comment in the comment section below let me know about your experience with compressors and I've messed out any useful applications for these fix but until then keep it load and I'll see you later

Channel: CSGuitars

Views: 305,706

Rating: 4.9265018 out of 5

Keywords: csguitars, csg, cs, guitar, guitars, colin, repair, custom, mod, modify, modification, pickups, amp, amplifier, valve, valves, pedal, blues, rock, metal, compressor, compression, comp, dyna comp, hypergravity, dynamics, dynamic range, maxon, tc electronic

Id: ajx-KblltnU

Length: 7min 30sec (450 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 25 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/Trigger757]

"adding compression to compression doesn't sound all that great" this guy has no idea what hes talking about, I added a whole pedalboard of compressors to my rig and now I can play like steve vai and John Petrucci.