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Keeley Compressor Mini… any thoughts?
- Thread starter Texican
- Start date
Well, guess I’ll have to be the first. Just bought it. Stay tuned…
Ingredients
- 2 ounces rye whiskey
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- Garnish: brandied cherry or lemon twist
I have one of the Keeley Mini’s too, but I haven’t had band practice for a while. Hopefully next weekend.
It’ll be going head to head with my Keeley Bassist.
It’ll be going head to head with my Keeley Bassist.
I know that testing gear with a band is where the most valuable experience comes from, but can you give us your impressions of the mini vs the bassist thus far? Both of these pedals were on my radar but they didn’t have the bassist to try.
I def want to know how it stacks up against the bassist, but I would also be interested to see if anyone has compared it to the new Aguilar db 599 comp.
The problem is that my bass amp is at my practice space, so I can’t make any useful comparisons til I crank it up.
I bought the Mini for guitar and it sounds great for that. The Bassist has been awesome for me and I’m doing the comparison on the off chance that the Mini brings something new to the table. The Bassist is great if you want an easy to use comp with a clean, professional sound.
Well, I guess GAS got me. GC has them on sale for $109, so I couldn’t resist temptation. The bassist has been a long time favorite of mine, but with certain amps I have been preferring the new Aggie db 599. On my first go around, the bassist beat out many comps, tube included. I hold it as the gold standard for easy transparent comps. Can’t wait to see how it shakes out with the mini!
I haven’t used it with a full band yet, nor have I used it with every single piece of gear that I own to check for compatibility. It does play nicely with a Sansamp pedal into a Genz Benz head. I would also say that it does something a little more magical for my jazz bass than it does for my P bass. So far so good. I generally don’t put my seal of approval on a pedal until I’ve used it at a couple of gigs consistently with no issues, but I have a feeling this little guy is going to stick around.
Well… I have only had one practice with it and it was with not my bass amp at a practice space I’m not familiar with.
So it was hard enough just getting a good sound dialed in. But after some back and forth with the two comps I only came out with a few points.
From what I could tell the Keeley Mini Comp doesn’t loose any bass. Although the space was pretty boomy, so I can’t be definitive about that.
Lastly the Mini Comp gave my signal a bit of a dirty flavor, which sounded good sometimes, others not.
If I had to choose right now I’d probably stick with my Keeley Bassist for it’s nice clean studio compression. But hopefully I’ll get in some more comparison time in the future. The battle is not over!
Thanks for that! My experience has been that it sounds better with my jazz bass than it does with my P bass w/ flats. I bought an MXR Thump preamp today which seems to pair nicely with the Mini Comp right after it. I only tried that combination with my short scale passive stingray so far, but it was very nice.
I was able to use the mini comp with a loud band the other day, using my jazz bass into a Genzler Magellan and NuClassic stack, and it sounded great. However, it did seem to cut the lows ever so slightly. Just enough to sound refined though, without being anemic.
I swapped the MXR Thump out for the Aguilar DB925 (as seen in the picture). The result of having the compressor after the Aguilar was not great. Both pedals sounded nice by themself, but seemed to disagree with each other when running simultaneously. I swapped the compressor to the middle position and put the Aguilar last, and the results were phenomenal. This is the best I’ve ever heard my short scale passive stingray sound. As I mentioned previously, the Keeley does seem to roll off some of the low end. Having the Aguilar afterwards with such a musical bass boost on tap makes that issue nonexistent… But I want to reiterate that the Keeley on its own doesn’t completely kill your low end, but rather cleans it up. It might just take a little too much off the bottom for some situations though, so that’s something to keep in mind. It also adds some nice harmonic content or “special sauce” that may or may not sound great to you depending on your rig, type of bass, and sonic preferences. For instance, I don’t like using it with my precision bass. The jazz bass sounds great if I want a slightly more modern tone. And again, the stingray sounds phenomenal! Hope that helps.
Another update: I could certainly use the Keeley Comp Mini on bass because it does sound pretty good except for the slight bass roll off. But I'm going to stick with the Keeley Bassist for its transparent VCA style compression.
