Whether they realize it or not, guitarists play through compressors all the time. Amps squeeze your signal, especially when you turn up the gain. When you perform through a mic’d amp, the sound system may further squash your sound. Recording guitarists often track through compressors. Additional compression is applied while mixing, and more still during mastering.
Still, some guitarists like adding another compression stage between guitar and amp. They find that light settings fatten their sound going into the amp, while heavier ones provide supernatural sustain. At one point in the ’70s, simple compressors such as the Armstrong Orange Squeezer and MXR Dyna Comp were practically required gear for session cats.
Control Freak
Those Carter-era compressors are simple devices—the Dyna Comp has only two controls, while the Squeezer has none. Nowadays players who love compression and the ability to fine-tune it gravitate to more complex pedals whose options rival those of outboard studio units.
The six-knob EarthQuaker Warden is a fine example of a feature-rich squeeze box, with dedicated attack, release, sustain, ratio, and output controls. There’s also a tone control—a subtle treble EQ that excels at restoring snap and sparkle lost to aggressive compression.
The Warden is an optical compressor, which means it uses an internal LED and light-dependent resistor to regulate levels, as opposed to the voltage-controlled amplifier (VCA) method used by the Dyna Comp, the Squeezer, and most modern compressors.
Optical Allusions
The Teletronix LA-2A, an outboard compressor from the ’60s, popularized optical compression. Newer non-optical compressors offer faster, more transparent compression, but opto compressors remains popular because of their vibey coloration and relatively slow response, both of which can to do nice things to guitar signals.
The Warden isn’t the only opto-comp stompbox on the market, but it’s one of the best. Workmanship is superb: the lucidly designed circuit board rests securely in the 125B-sized enclosure. Soldering is flawless. Despite the pedal’s small footprint, it’s easy to wrangle those small knobs.
Ratings
Pros:
Highly customizable tones. Vibey, fat-sounding compression. Excellent workmanship.
Cons:
No battery-power option. No parallel compression (wet/dry blend).
Tones:
Ease of Use:
Build/Design:
Value:
Street:
$195
EarthQuaker Devices, The Warden
earthquakerdevices.com
And man, it sounds good. The Warden runs on a standard 9-volt power supply, but its internal charge pump boosts operation to 18 volts. The higher voltage and great-sounding OPA2134 op amp give the Warden a clear tone with ample headroom. Setting all controls at noon yields subtle fattening. Faster attack times, lower thresholds, and higher compression ratios flatten dynamics like a steamrollered Wile E. Coyote, yet there’s little coloration. The perfectly voiced tone control restores lost sparkle and adds bite to neutered note attacks. (Like all compressors, the Warden can make noise more noticeable in soft passages, but it’s quiet for a stompbox unit.)
One thing the Warden doesn’t have is a blend knob to balance compressed and uncompressed signals, a feature popularized by boutique compressors such as the Barber Tone Press. (A common technique is to compress heavily, but mix in some unprocessed sound for stronger note attack and a subtler effect.) But I had little trouble dialing in subtle compression via slow attack times and low ratio settings.
Squeeze Me
I started with a clean-toned ’63 Fender Stratocaster straight into a Divided by 13 CJ11, a Fender-inspired tweed/blackface hybrid. Next I replayed the same part through the Warden with all knobs at noon. The pedal softened attack, increased sustain, and evened out arpeggios. Switching to an overdriven ’81 Gibson Les Paul with PAFs, I played chunky chords with no compression. I reintroduced the Warden, but with a slower attack time, a lower compression ratio, and extra highs via the pedal’s tone knob. The compressed version had smoother sustain and less discrepancy between chords and single notes, but thanks to the treble boost, it probably had more impact than the uncompressed sound.
Verdict
Evaluating the Warden is easy—it’s a vibey, versatile, and extremely well made compressor at a competitive price. The trickier questions: Will adding compression between guitar and amp suit your style? And if so, would you prefer to work with the Warden’s flexible but relatively complex controls, or go with a minimalist model in the Dyna Comp/Orange Squeezer vein? If you’re confident about your compression needs and seek studio-style control from a stompbox, you’ll thrive under the Warden’s supervision.
EBS BassIQ Blue Label Triple Envelope Filter Pedal
The EBS BassIQ produces sounds ranging from classic auto-wah effects to spaced-out "Funkadelic" and synth-bass sounds. It is for everyone looking for a fun, fat-sounding, and responsive envelope filter that reacts to how you play in a musical way.
Reverend Vernon Reid Totem Series Electric Guitar - Shaman
Silos features six presets, tap tempo, one full second of delay time, and three voices—two of which are styled after bucket-brigade and tape-delay sounds. In the $150 price category, it’s not unusual for a digital delay to leave some number of those functions out. And spending the same money on a true-analog alternative usually means warm, enveloping sounds but limited functionality and delay time. Silos, improbably perhaps, offers a very elegant solution to this can’t-have-it-all dilemma in a U.S.-made effect.
A More Complete Cobbling Together
Silos’ utility is bolstered by a very unintimidating control set, which is streamlined and approachable. Three of those controls are dedicated to the same mix, time, and repeats controls you see on any delay. But saving a preset to one of the six spots on the rotary preset dial is as easy as holding the green/red illuminated button just below the mix and preset knobs. And you certainly won’t get lost in the weeds if you move to the 3-position toggle, which switches between a clear “digital” voice, darker “analog” voice, and a “tape” voice which is darker still.
“The three voices offer discernibly different response to gain devices.”
One might suspect that a tone control for the repeats offers similar functionality as the voice toggle switch. But while it’s true that the most obvious audible differences between digital, BBD, and tape delays are apparent in the relative fidelity and darkness of their echoes, the Silos’ three voices behave differently in ways that are more complex than lighter or duskier tonality. For instance, the digital voice will never exhibit runaway oscillation, even at maximum mix and repeat settings. Instead, repeats fade out after about six seconds (at the fastest time settings) or create sleepy layers of slow-decaying repeats that enhance detail in complex, sprawling, loop-like melodic phrases. The analog voice and tape voice, on the other hand, will happily feed back to psychotic extremes. Both also offer satisfying sensitivity to real-time, on-the-fly adjustments. For example, I was tickled with how I could generate Apocalypse Now helicopter-chop effects and fade them in and out of prominence as if they were approaching or receding in proximity—an effect made easier still if you assign an expression pedal to the mix control. This kind of interactivity is what makes analog machines like the Echoplex, Space Echo, and Memory Man transcend mere delay status, and the sensitivity and just-right resistance make the process of manipulating repeats endlessly engaging.
Doesn't Flinch at Filth
EarthQuaker makes a point of highlighting the Silos’ affinity for dirty and distorted sounds. I did not notice that it behaved light-years better than other delays in this regard. But the three voices most definitely offer discernibly different responses to gain devices. The super-clear first repeat in the digital mode lends clarity and melodic focus, even to hectic, unpredictable, fractured fuzzes. The analog voice, which EQD says is inspired by the tone makeup of a 1980s-vintage, Japan-made KMD bucket brigade echo, handles fuzz forgivingly inasmuch as its repeats fade warmly and evenly, but the strong midrange also keeps many overtones present as the echoes fade. The tape voice, which uses aMaestro Echoplex as its sonic inspiration, is distinctly dirtier and creates more nebulous undercurrents in the repeats. If you want to retain clarity in more melodic settings, it will create a warm glow around repeats at conservative levels. Push it, and it will summon thick, sometimes droning haze that makes a great backdrop for slower, simpler, and hooky psychedelic riffs.
In clean applications, this decay and tone profile lend the tape setting a spooky, foggy aura that suggests the cold vastness of outer space. The analog voice often displays an authentic BBD clickiness in clean repeats that’s sweet for underscoring rhythmic patterns, while the digital voice’s pronounced regularity adds a clockwork quality that supports more up-tempo, driving, electronic rhythms.
The Verdict
Silos’ combination of features seems like a very obvious and appealing one. But bringing it all together at just less than 150 bucks represents a smart, adept threading of the cost/feature needle.
EarthQuaker Devices Silos Multi-generational Time Reflection Delay Pedal
