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New Empress Compressor MKII
- Thread starter crguti
- Start date
I just got my bass compressor, and it’s making the clicking noise even with my active Sadowsky. The pedal sounds great, and I look forward to using it once that fix is in place. I’m going to keep it boxed up until then.
Not to derail, but Sadowsky basses typically have a passive tone control after the active circuit. I'm no techie, but my understanding is that the passive tone control brings impedance up from the normal low of a fully active circuit, and therefore reduces the buffering effect. So, maybe that's what's going on here... or maybe it's just retrograde bloviation on my part.
That’s an interesting point I had never considered about a passive tone control, but it makes sense.
I'm looking. Very closely. Not the cheapest comp on the market, but I've known for years that the feature set I want won't be had for pocket change. Thanks for the rec.
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It didn't seem like you were looking out for the cheapest compressor on the market.
Seems consistent with this having been identified as a passive-specific issue.
I'm not hearing anything with mine passive or active. Big props to Empress for jumping on this immediately, though. Mine would be running downstream in my chain so wouldn't be an issue anyway but good to know they have my back.
As someone who works in technology and manufacturing, this is a concerning pattern. Its great that empress is standing behind their products and not giving consumers a problem about the fix, but this smacks of cutting corners on testing...I mean its not like you had to hop on one foot on a Tuesday to make this happen. You simply had to plug a passive bass directly into the box. Its like when I work w a third party and they hand me software and it doesnt even compile. I get it, checking your work sucks...I have these discussions w my 7 and 9 year old all the time...but at this point I wouldnt be jumping to be an early adopter as a consumer.
Lowendtech
Happily trending in my own peculiar direction.
Honestly, apart from this minor and easily fixed bug, the unit sounds so good that I’m not worried a bit about it.
With mine I can barely tell that it’s happening and if I hadn’t swapped to a cable and listened really hard for it, I never would’ve noticed it at all. With my wireless, it’s imperceptible.
My point is, there’s no point in making adverse assumptions about Empress’s testing of their work. Maybe the units they were using for testing did not exhibit the problem. You don’t know what you don’t know sometimes.
Zoia had a problematic keyboard, compressor has a bug for passive basses. Where's the assumption?
Lowendtech
Happily trending in my own peculiar direction.
Right here.
You are assuming that they didn’t check their work. Maybe when they did, (and you can believe they did) the issue did not present itself.
Hondo did a nice review of the pedal and didn’t notice anything either. With a bunch of passive basses.
Comparing the work done in bringing this to market to having to teach your kids to check their homework is just a bit lame IMO.
Lowendtech
Happily trending in my own peculiar direction.
Kind regards to @monsterthompson for posting this.
Mitch has already reached out to me for shipping info for the ribbon cable swap. Let's give them some time to sort this out and get the fix to all who need it.
Thanks.
Thanks.
Sometimes issues pop up after the fact. Could have been an issue that didn't present itself until the units were produced in bulk. Moving a component a mm or 2 can cause issues.
I have faith in their track record and also in their customer service. I wouldn't be jumping to any assumptions.
