Dumb question - what can a compressor pedal do in a gig setting and why would you want or not want to use one?

[That Cal Webway]

I don't play loud, and play with nuance and dynamics.
And boy, I have a bunch of compressors!
But I just use them at home in playing and practicing. Or not.
I like a touch of sustain and slight boost, definitely not for squishing.

As many say, it should be almost transparent.

Since I backup singer-songwriter types, I don't use any pedals- just amp reverb and play clean of course.

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[johnny k]

It is the sort of pedal i can't tell if is on or not. I got one after reading that it was useful in a country setting, well i don't know about that. I might need to try it home and figure out how it works.

 

[Telecaster88]

Don't know I have much to add, especially since I don't play live anymore, but at home I play clean and quiet now, and my Dyna Comp Deluxe sweetens and fattens up the tone beautifully at low volumes. If you're out there rocking a tube amp loud with lots of gain, I can see where a compressor would be unnecessary or unhelpful. For me at home though, it's magic, and it's always on.

Fwiw, I have no problem maintaining picking dynamics with the compressor on.

 

[D_Malone]

I use a compressor live. I put it after dirt pedals and I only kick it on when I roll back my guitar volume for clean sounds. It keeps me where I need to be in the mix. I could do the same thing with a post-dirt boost, but I like some subtle compression on my clean sound.

 

[Refugee]

OP, you mention Lowell George. He used the Origin 1176 rack comp for getting that great slide sound without using lots of gain. Well, lucky us. A few years ago they came out with a pedal version. Pricey, but nothing else sounds like it. They also make one called the Slide Rg, which stacks two of them.

 

[THX1123]

A compressor can affect the tones you can get out of your guitar by allowing different volume knob positions to be loud and present in the live band mix without running the amp super loudly.

I like the sound of a neck pickup of my humbucker guitars with the guitar volume turned down to 3-5 through a compressor. I think it makes a different sound more easily available. It has more top end and chime and less squishy-ness. Turn up the volume knob on the guitar and the tone fattens and gets all sustrain-y.

 

[SlideGuy123]

Mine is always on, BUT:
- I play lap steel, so I’m fingerpicking. The comp is used very lightly to help balance string to string volume
- mine is an optical comp, the Mad Professor Forest Green. I use the sustain setting, which messes less with the attack.

As mentioned earlier, different types of comps react differently. A Dyna Comp type didn’t work for me at all, because I dont want to squeeze the life out of each note. I’ve never tried an Orange Squeezer type, but I have used FET comps before and they work for me, too.

 

[arlum]

For live playing I like to set a compressor for the fastest attack possible to preserve dynamics / allow for maximum speed but with the longest possible release time to max out sustain. I use a Cali 76 Stacked addition, (two comps in one), to do this. It's easy to roll back the guitar volume or deaden a picked note but there's not much you can do to lengthen a note without the compressor in the loop. When I hit a note and just want that note to sing it's the compressor making it possible.

 

[mexicanyella]

A few uses for a compressor in a guitar rig:

1. Taming spikes with a totally clean amp. If you have a very clean amp with a lot of headroom, the sudden transients from aggressive string snapping are unpleasant. A compressor can tame that. Used very cleverly, it can turn a "sterile" clean guitar amp into something more natural-feeling.

2. Taming spikes with an acoustic guitar. Acoustic pickups and amps have the same unpleasant response to hard transients as superclean electric amps. Just playing an acoustic, the flex of the top absorbs the transients and sounds nicer. The problem is the piezo pickups don't flex like the top -- they respond exactly to the force applied. Likewise, a compressor can also reduce the nasty piezo quack.

3. Compression with a little boost gives your guitar more sensitivity without adding more distortion. This can be really nice if you want that EVH I-can-hit-every-harmonic quality without gross amounts of distortion.

A lot of guitarists don't want or need any of this. The "amp is distorting but cleans up when I roll back my volume" players hate it because it works against that. Players who like to run tube amps at levels where they are no longer linear are already getting compression from the amp.

I'm mostly a super-clean player so I use it a lot. I have two of the same pedal with different settings. One is pretty much a hard limiter for my archtop so it never spikes the amp. The other has a less aggressive ratio and a little boost. It gives me punchy, natural cleans and makes the fuzz sing more. I turn it off when I turn on the soft overdrive because the overdrive accomplishes the same thing.

#1 and #3 pretty well cover what I like about using a compressor for guitar.

 

[bluesholyman]

I don't play live, I mostly write in my studio, and I mixed live sound for about 10 years (although not as my day job.)

Wouldn't be without them for live sound or recording (to prevent clipping an input, if needed,) but just me playing guitar, I don't care for them - they take away the feel and dynamics that I enjoy when playing the guitar, but I am not competing with the rest of the band in that situation either.

All depends on what sound you are going for as some things only sound that way because of the compressor. Its a tool to have in the tool box when needed. Maybe you use it, maybe you don't.

 

[Kingpin]

Compressors are great for getting that '90s hot country lead sound of Brent Mason or Vince Gill. Like anything, it can be overdone if you don't exercise a bit of taste. In my country band I used a Boss CS-2 on maybe 10-15% of our tunes.

 

[darkwaters]

Interesting thread. In the end, though, it’s reaffirmed for me that this would be of no use since I like dynamics and play zero Country. Thanks for saving me some money!

 

[schmee]

Apologies if this is a super basic and/or stupid question but what can a compressor pedal do in a live gig situation and what could/would you use it for (or why not)?

As an amateur home studio enthusiast, I kind of have an understanding of how compression works in a mix situation.

However, I've been on a Little Feat kick lately and reading about how Lowell George used compressor(s) both in the studio and live. I have an Analogman Juicer pedal that was gifted to me many years ago and I think I used it once on a recording (for a friend's project, not my own) to give some clean tones a percussive "pop" but I've never used it live. I have a gig with my band this upcoming weekend where I plan to play my Strat (for the first time since 2018) and am debating whether it's worth bringing the Juicer. I just don't really know what it would do or understand how I could use it.

I used an MXR Compressor for years. It was seldom off.
I then got a wireless guitar rig and started going out in the room when playing. What I discovered is my guitar sounded very mushy and indistinct out there where the listeners were. No "cut" or "edge of notes". It was terribly disconcerting.
Sold the compressor and never looked back.
The strange thing is it sounded wonderful standing right in front of the amp on stage.

Caveat: I'm 90% a neck pickup player. I think it wouldn't be so bad playing a Tele on the bridge pickup etc . Might tame some brightness.

I highly recommend a wireless rig, many of us have no idea what we really sound like out there.
The other thing I discovered playing outdoor shows is how badly the guitar amp disappears about 30+ feet out. I usually use a Fender Pro outdoors and it seems very loud on stage. But walking out there all you hear is bass and drums, which punch through and carry very well. The guitar just disappears. I now mic the guitar through the sound system every time outdoors or a big venue.

 

[4pickupguy]

Apologies if this is a super basic and/or stupid question but what can a compressor pedal do in a live gig situation and what could/would you use it for (or why not)?

As an amateur home studio enthusiast, I kind of have an understanding of how compression works in a mix situation.

However, I've been on a Little Feat kick lately and reading about how Lowell George used compressor(s) both in the studio and live. I have an Analogman Juicer pedal that was gifted to me many years ago and I think I used it once on a recording (for a friend's project, not my own) to give some clean tones a percussive "pop" but I've never used it live. I have a gig with my band this upcoming weekend where I plan to play my Strat (for the first time since 2018) and am debating whether it's worth bringing the Juicer. I just don't really know what it would do or understand how I could use it.

Do you play a low headroom amp loud enough for it to compress? Or a high headroom amp down low where the amp does not compress? If you’re doing ok without one then you probably don’t need one. I like them after drives so I can lower my gain. But compressors can do so many things its one of the most overlooked tools.

 

[JustABluesGuy]

I have never been a fan of compressors. If I were in a 1980's haircut band, well then that would still be a maybe. I would personally be leery of introducing a pedal for the first time at a gig, though.

Yeah, testing things out for the first time at a gig, sounds like a plan for failure.

 

[JustABluesGuy]

Don't know I have much to add, especially since I don't play live anymore, but at home I play clean and quiet now, and my Dyna Comp Deluxe sweetens and fattens up the tone beautifully at low volumes. If you're out there rocking a tube amp loud with lots of gain, I can see where a compressor would be unnecessary or unhelpful. For me at home though, it's magic, and it's always on.

Fwiw, I have no problem maintaining picking dynamics with the compressor on.

I have used one that way as well. As sort of an overdrive for cleans.

 

[JustABluesGuy]

It is the sort of pedal i can't tell if is on or not. I got one after reading that it was useful in a country setting, well i don't know about that. I might need to try it home and figure out how it works.

Maybe try it in a more urban setting?

Sorry, I couldn’t resist.

 

[Mikecito]

I'm using an SP always on at the moment. Truthfully more as a master volume for my rig and a to take a little edge off my wah and bridge pickup. It does something nice for lower volume gigs when the amp volume is not at the happy place. Absolutely not a necessity though.

 

[65 Champ Amp]

Seems important to mention that the Juicer is basically an Orange Squeezer, right? So you've got a particular kind of compressor there, and not the kind that the vast majority of guitar players are using.

I think when the average guitarist thinks of a compressor pedal they are thinking of a Boss CS-2/CS-3, MXR DynaComp, or one of the hundreds of clones of those early VCA designs. An Orange Squeezer isn't a VCA compressor at all. It's a pretty crude early FET circuit. It's kind of gnarly and unrefined. That's its charm. But I don't think many people reach for that circuit when they're looking for studio/stage type volume control.

Long way of saying it might be the pedal you're using. The Juicer isn't going to give you much control over the compression, and I think most people use it for more or less what you said in your post about bringing out the percussive "pop" in a recording.

This needed to be said. The Orange Squeezer is kind of a different animal.
Two artists/bands that although quite different, used Orange Squeezers to great effect were Mark Knopfler, and Bush. In Knopfler’s case, a Strat into an OS, into a clean amp. Bush ~ OS into cranked Marshalls.
Neither suffered from the usual complaints about (mis)use of compressors.

Most OS have a mini bias pot inside with which you can make it more subtle, or more noticeable. But you won’t find controls over attack, release, or threshold. Just a volume knob. IMO it doen’t need them.

 

[MisterZ]

Most recently I used my Dyna Comp to give a clean boost when I needed to bring out a line or phrase. Kicked it on as needed, kicked it off when not. Left knob at 3:00, right knob at 9:30.