As much as we all love juicy, organic guitar tones, it can be just as inspiring to go the opposite way. Combining various modulation effects, envelope filters, oscillators, and more can result in sounds that owe more to Kraftwerk than Led Zeppelin.
Boss SY-1
A compact version of the company’s well-known polyphonic synths offers 11 types of sounds each with 11 different variations. It also includes a parallel loop, guitar/bass mode, and expression pedal support.
$212 street
Source Audio C4
An incredibly deep collection of Eurorack-style tones are available via a rather straight-forward 4-knob setup and the companion Neuro editor (available for Mac, PC, and mobile devices). It offers four independent voices, 11 envelope followers, and two programmable 16-step sequencers.
$239 street
Meris Enzo
This multi-voice synth is a digital unit with an analog signal path for maximum clarity and response. It has stereo outputs, MIDI, switchable buffered bypass, and more. On the effects side, it houses two tap-modulated delays, mono, poly, and arpeggiated synth modes, and an extremely shapeable envelope.
$299 street
Electro-Harmonix Synth9
Containing nine different synth voices including emulations of some of the most recognizable synth sounds, this pedal offers independent volume control of both your dry signal and synth signal plus two CTRL knobs that change function depending on the preset.
$247 street
EarthQuaker Devices Bit Commander
This monophonic analog synth offers a three-octave (one up, one down, and two down) range to blend the glitchy with the pedestrian. Depending on what fret you’re on, the results can be either destructive or spacey.
$189 street
Pigtronix Space Rip
This is tiny pedal that includes an onboard VCO that produces square and sawtooth waveforms that are controlled via rate and tune knobs. It also has an octave button that drops the entire signal down 12 frets.
$179 street
Mooer E7
Dig polyphonic synth sounds but don’t have a lot of space? The E7 offers seven different types of synth tones, seven slots for presets, and controls for attack, speed, high and low cut, and mix.
$97 street
mooeraudio.com
Empress Effects ZOIA
Think of this as a DIY approach to creating your own modular synth. It has a library of more than 80 different modules that cover a host of effects such as delay, reverb, compression, bit crusher, and more. Plus, you can save up to 64 different patches.
$499 street
Red Witch Synthortron II
Packed with two synth oscillators, along with dedicated controls for amplitude modulation and envelope filter, this analog machine offers a wealth of different options that range from wickedly weird trem to sample hold, and more.
$279 street
Keeley Synth-1
This single-note wave generator offers quite a few different sounds via a relatively simple control set. It has attack, level, and blend knobs along with a powerful filter section that shapes the EQ of the fuzz. You can also hook up a TRS expression pedal to alter the filter in real time.
$179 street
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The typical controls on a compressor can be confusing and often misunderstood. At the heart of the MXR Studio Compressor is the ratio control, which offers up four levels of squish.
Their conversation made me reflect on compressors more generally, and their standing as probably the least understood guitar pedal effect. There is a long-running joke about the guitar player who spends 30 minutes dialing in his compressor before the sudden realization that, for all the knob twisting, the pedal itself has never turned on. Most players have put on the compressor dunce cap for at least 30 seconds—if not 30 minutes.
When compared to effects like distortion and delay, compression can be as esoteric, nuanced, and arcane as a clandestine funk-guitar society’s secret handshake. In my experience, a large swath of guitar players cannot even detect compression until they are sonically beaten over the head with it. And of those who can discern the bludgeoning, many don’t know which knob to turn to achieve a more subtle effect. We guitar players should have known we were in trouble when many professional compressors came with buttons labeled “auto.” If even our know-it-all, front-of-house cousins need a crutch, what hope do we have?
Compression originated in the recording studio, where professional engineers were both its inventors and primary users, so its controls tend to be more technical than your amp’s bass, middle, and treble knobs. Let’s break down some controls in the simplest terms possible.
Introduced in 1972, the Dyna Comp had two simple controls: output and sensitivity. It’s far from transparent, but added a musical coloration that made fans out of Bonnie Raitt and Lowell George.
Threshold: This setting determines what gets squished and what doesn’t. Everything below the threshold passes through unchanged. Everything above the threshold gets squished. This is often labeled “sustain” on many guitar pedals. Sometimes, as the sustain is turned up, the compressor’s threshold point goes down, lowering the bar for what gets compressed, and more effect gets applied to your dry signal.
Ratio: How much compression is applied to signals above the threshold. A 1:1 ratio would mean no compression. At 2:1, for every 2 dB over the threshold, the compressor will only let 1 dB through. Some classic compressors have a ratio around 30:1. This means that above the threshold, you can increase the input signal significantly but receive only a small increase in output. Boom, you’re chickin’ pickin’.
Attack: This adjusts how fast it takes the compressor to get to work. A shorter attack means the clamping action happens immediately, while a longer attack time lets a brief burst of signal through before they start applying the aforementioned compression ratio.
Release: After the signal drops below the threshold, the compressor takes a certain amount of time to stop compressing or release. A longer release lazily hangs on and stops compressing when it gets around to it. Shorter releases get out of the way faster, and the next transient can get through uncompressed before being re-attacked.
Makeup Gain (or Output Level): The compression process naturally limits gain. To match the energy level of your uncompressed signal, you may need to boost the compressor’s output. Compression evens out the peaks, and makeup gain can compensate for any perceived differences in level.
Threshold and ratio are the heart of the compressor’s function. Threshold decides what gets compressed and ratio determines how much it’s compressed. Attack and release are about how fast compression is applied and how quickly it stops being applied. By controlling these, you are controlling how quickly transients are attacked and how slowly transients are released. Every guitar compressor has an attack and release time, but many designs hide these controls via internal, fixed component values. The designer has benevolently dictated what setting you should use. Output level lets you make up for all that crushing by adding level to compensate.
This is just the beginning of compression. We’ve got the knobs, we know the function, and next time we’ll discuss how we can use this dynamic darling
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