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Reasonable, go-to compressor pedal for bass
- Thread starter Mo Boogs
- Start date
Keeley Compresor Pro with the bass settings he provides in the manual sounds pretty damn good. I know a guy that plays a Keeley Bassist and he has some of the best tone around. The Origin Cali 76, Empress Bass Compressor Mk II, and the Dark Glass Hyper Luminal all get rave reviews. Honestly, you can't go wrong with any of them! If I was doing a simple bass / pedal compressor / amp setup, I'd probably go for the Compressor Pro in the effects loop, or with the Empress in front of the amp (obviously, I like to make my life complicated, as referenced in my signature 
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The Diamond is a simple one-control compressor, wonderful tone enhancer and has useful well-designed eq.
The Empress is a full-featured compressor with a fun and useful tone switch.
Broughton Omnicomp has most of these features and has a bit of the Diamond tone.
The Fairfield Accountant is not specifically made for bass guitar but it works, it’s fun (can’t explain why I say this but it’s true) although could maybe use some tone thickening somewhere in the signal chain, really interesting dirty tone. One of these days I’ll get a Damnation Audio Dirtfixer for this and the Fairfield Barbershop.
The Empress is a full-featured compressor with a fun and useful tone switch.
Broughton Omnicomp has most of these features and has a bit of the Diamond tone.
The Fairfield Accountant is not specifically made for bass guitar but it works, it’s fun (can’t explain why I say this but it’s true) although could maybe use some tone thickening somewhere in the signal chain, really interesting dirty tone. One of these days I’ll get a Damnation Audio Dirtfixer for this and the Fairfield Barbershop.
The same guy I referenced above also runs a Fairfield Barbershop. He must be onto something!
The Diamond Bass Comp is the absolute best compressor I have ever used. I use a 1982 Boss CS-2 also sounds incredible
I can confirm that the Mira is very good and a while ago they were blowing them out for under ~$100.
I’ll say the unit67 is my favorite. It doubles as a “switch bass keep gain staging the same” pedal with the big level knob. Not as controllable in the compression though.
For slap a multiband or something with a HPF sidechain can be helpful. (The Mira has this also).
Three I can recommend:
- Keeley Bassist A super clean transparent compressor. Easy to dial in and virtually impossible to make yourself sound bad with it.
- Mad Professor Forest Green Another very capable and easy to use compressor that "just sounds good" and adds a little special sauce to your sound.
- Ampeg Opto Comp Inexpensive very bass oriented compressor that adds some nice girth to your sound.
- Keeley Bassist A super clean transparent compressor. Easy to dial in and virtually impossible to make yourself sound bad with it.
- Mad Professor Forest Green Another very capable and easy to use compressor that "just sounds good" and adds a little special sauce to your sound.
- Ampeg Opto Comp Inexpensive very bass oriented compressor that adds some nice girth to your sound.
If you get a Source Audio Atlas, you can have really good models of all of these charector compressors (and many more) at the flick of a switch.
My current favs are a super clean modern compressor (think MXR) on my patch 1, a tube type of compressor (like a Mark Bass) on patch 2, and an optical compressor on patch 3.
Super versatile, Stereo and sounds amazing. You can go deep dive with the Neuro app...or just collect the patches you like from the cloud, tweak it to taste and use it like a set of controllable presets.
I've gone thru a few. My favorites have been the Keely bassist and both mxr bass compressors for simplicity. If you're an app/computer guy, the tc spectra comp is cool, and sa atlas is really OP it has multi channels and an EQ section.
It's really not very useful to just recommend a compressor without knowing what you want it to do, and what you need out of it.
Even things out just a bit? Brick wall limiting? Fattening up? More Sustain?
Different compressors do different things well.
My vote goes to the Empress Bass Compressor 
easy to dial, High-pass filter to selectively compress the low-end (or not), great visual feedback and can be transparent or color your tone.
easy to dial, High-pass filter to selectively compress the low-end (or not), great visual feedback and can be transparent or color your tone.
Yes. I went through the large format Cali76tx, their Compact Bass, Whirwind opto comp, and a slew of others. I spent a lot of time adjusting for different scenarios, different basses, different amps.
I eventually found my way to the Keeley Bassist. It's easy to set and works well. I don't think about compression anymore. It's just doing it's job without me having to manage it.
Since no one has mentioned the EBS compressor I'll add it to the list. I have used mine ( the gray one) for about 20 years. It does exactly what I want ( mild compression and fattening).
I'm gonna jump headlong in the other direction of the previous replies and ask "Have you considered a Zoom pedal?"
I've got the MS-70CDR+ and it packs a lot more than just great compressors. Noise gate is great, built-in tuner, and I also dig the Chorus effects on it too (delays are nice as well). For me, it sandwiches 4 pedals into one spot and does it well. Nothing wrong with the compressors everyone else has mentioned, just saying the Zoom does the trick for me and may work well for you too
I've got the MS-70CDR+ and it packs a lot more than just great compressors. Noise gate is great, built-in tuner, and I also dig the Chorus effects on it too (delays are nice as well). For me, it sandwiches 4 pedals into one spot and does it well. Nothing wrong with the compressors everyone else has mentioned, just saying the Zoom does the trick for me and may work well for you too
