[Tim Bowen]

I've seen loads of working players' boards with garden variety stomps, loads with boutique stuff, and loads with a combination thereof. The only person that the nuances really matter to is the player, of this I'm reasonably certain!

This will sound like an oxymoron, but a primary consideration for myself with a compressor is that there's quite a bit of output volume and a reasonable amount of headroom on tap. For my personal applications, the garden variety stuff always seems to fall short in this respect.

Guit30, I hope my previous comments were not spoken out of turn as to "color" the tone of your assessments... but I'll bet that you'll be listening with your ears anyway, regardless of who says or plays what! Congrats on the assignment.