BBE Opto Stomp initial review

[BillyRay]

I don't have a lot of experience with compressors. Well, I have pretty much none since I've used a compressor when there was an engineer around (demos, recordings) and I did not have to learn the finer points of using it.

Since now I'm gigging with a rock band instead of rooting it with folk singers, I felt that a good compressor was something I needed to get that extra punch, clear up the sound and free up some headroom by getting rid of some spikes.

I wanted a cheap, reliable, simple to use piece of gear so I bought an Opto Stomp after some deliberation. I received it today and tried it on my own (I'll gig it tomorrow).

Some observations:
a) It seems pretty well built and sturdy. I've seen units that look more like tanks than this one, but it'll probably never get stomped on since it'll live atop of my cab.
b) Controls are simple to use. Very much so.
c) The usable range of tone is not all that broad. I had to turn the dial on the "comp" knob a fair amount before I noticed anything.
d) It isn't noisy. It very well might be in a band situation though, but I play a passive p with the treble rolled off, so I doubt it.
e) Doesn't seem to be much roll-off of the lows and highs.

As for what it does, I noticed after some quick experimentation that even if it's a one trick pony (you can't change the treshold, attack, release, etc.) it does its trick extremly well. When I played finger style, it had a noticeable effect on my tone: every note got tighter, punchier and the signal was a lot more even (even though you can still hear spikes on initial attack if you really dig in). This means that for slap, it still has a lot of dynamics (and transients) going. It is also quite transparent and didn't mess with my tone: it was still rich, full and meaty, just with more sustain and nice "roundness" to it.

Overall it's a winner and it'll probably stay on all the time for now on. I might even try to record our next demo (very informal, just to be able to give to our fans) with it altough some people reported fizzy artifacts.