[darkbluemurder]

Funnily enough, I don't like the Tone Press for bass guitar at all. For guitar it's absolutely killer, especially in conncetion with the Barber Direct Drive LG (the low gain variant). For bass guitar I discovered the Mad Professor Forest Green Comp, which seems to make the bass sound better at any setting. But what's even more funny, I don't care for it at all for guitar use.

I have read many good things about the Wampler Ego Comp but never had the chance to play one.

Cheers Stephan

[Guitar74]

compression can work really well in certain settings.  Compression is used very well by guitarists such as Jimmy Page and David Gilmour, and both sound as expressive as anyone.   If you've got a lot of instruments to cut thru, or one or two big bandwidth hogs (e.g. another distorted guitarist) then compression has all positives.  In my opinion it's important to use it subtly and well. 

I used to like the old Boss cs-2 foot pedal compressor - haven't used it in many years.

http://www.proguitarshop.com/index.php?CategoryID=40  - lots of options!

I'm on the lookout for a 2nd hand Rockman mini rack compressor.

It's funny that the Dynacomp was mentioned. I actually still have one on my board. Use it a lot. You just have to set it cautiously. Set right, it's one of those pedals that you forget you have on. Set wrong and it is just terrible. That being said, it will probably get replaced with one that has a blend control so I can get back a little dry signal.

[Guitar74]

Update. I removed the Dynacomp. After several yrs it just started acting finicky. All of a sudden, it sounded great with single coils but any kind of humbucker, and it just went into suck mode, for lack of a better term, where it would clamp down on the signal so tightly that humbuckers would almost disappear.

I looked at a few, tried out a few, and after exhaustively trying three different guitars (my Highway 1 strat with a jb jr and factory singles, my Big Apple Strat, and one of my RG Ibanez) I finally settled on, of all things, another two knob compressor. This time it was the J.Rockett Squeegee. Why? Because you can actually set it to where it evens out humbuckers being full on, or split. It doesn't go into freak out limiting if it sees a hot signal from a humbucker. And it, at least with the low settings I have, it just balances everything out, and gives my clean that nice little sparkle that I love about compression. When I hit my distortion I don't even notice it. And set this low, I can still be dynamic. It doesn't kill your nuances unless you set it to.

[darkbluemurder]

I used to hate compressors until I found the Barber Tone Press. The difference is in the blend control which retains the attack of the direct signal but blends in the sustained signal. Love it for clean tones. I don't use compression on overdriven tones normally.

Cheers Stephan