I've found that when I go from a heavy hand to a light hand it is a really effective tool to draw out the nuances of the light hand. My style is to normally play with a reasonably light touch ...and then when I want to get a more extreme sound dig in. Having a compression level set low enough that it effects my standard playing seems to kill my 'extra' that I give.
As I write this it occurs to me that the suggestion would be to use a peak limiter, but I've yet to find that balance where I can hear the difference (either in my gear clipping or my ear) without feeling squashed.
There are actually a myriad of possible answers/approaches to this. One thing to listen for, and experiment with, is the actual
sound of the "extra" that you give.
For one example, theoretically if
all that changes is the level of the signal, with no clipping anywhere, then that "extra" effectively
has no distinguishing sound. It's just louder. If that is (or is close to) the case, and you find that the extra burst of loudness is really what you miss, then the solution is to get an amp with more headroom, and speakers that can handle higher wattage. That way you have greater dynamic range with no clipping, and a greater ability to use the louder peaks cleanly and without fear of speaker harm.
As another example, if you use an amp that overdrives nicely, and gives you a gritty or crunchy breakup whenever you hit those big peaks, and
if you want that sound; then you'd probably benefit from either turning up the output gain of the compressor so that your overall signal is closer to that breaking-up point at all times, or you'd want to use a line-level peak limiter
after the preamp section of the amp. A lot of amp heads have such a thing built in, but those usually don't sound very good. Or you might be in one of those cases where you really don't benefit from compression at all. That's completely legitimate.
Another (very common and likely) scenario is if the biggest tone change from that "extra" digging in is actually from the strings themselves, or the fret buzz and general clatter of a moment of heavy playing--IOW all in the bass itself, rather than the amp. A lot of that zing, grind, clatter, and buzz is in the upper frequency range--so if the comp you use happens to attenuate the highs when compressing heavily, then yep, it "kills" that extra tone. This is
very common, especially from
dbx comps. There are three main solutions:
--Use a comp that doesn't attenuate the highs so much, under heavy compression.
--Use a dual-band comp, so the highs aren't necessarily attenuated
at all when you hit a big slap or pop or pluck with a lot of low-frequency energy;
--Use a comp that naturally
enhances the high frequencies. Some of my reviews mention a particularly "zingy" or "bright" or "cutting" tone, and those would probably suit you.
Another angle, back to the limiter idea you mentioned, is to use a setting that
I use more often than not: a high ratio with a very high threshold, and a very fast release time. That's a peak limiter, and if you dial it carefully, your signal is not affected at all
until you hit peaks that you do not want to pass. A "better quality" pedal or rack capable of this setting should be able to do it without much noticeable tone loss. If there is still some amount of amp overdriving you want to achieve, you just set the make-up gain so the limited peaks still get up into the drive range you need.
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