A compressor for guitar is mostly used for clean sounds, as the strings of the guitar decay quickly. On distorted sounds, the distortion itself adds compression as a side-effect; this means the compressor could even be a nuisance, as additional compression will kill the dynamics and touch-sensitivity of the distortion. Still, there is always the nice trick of compressing the guitar to the max, then gently driving it just into the distortion of the amplifier, so that every tone of the guitar gets the same decent amount of distortion.

Clean sounds benefit from compression, as it helps to lengthen sustain of the strings. Another typical application is to emphasize the attack of the picked strings with the Attack parameter. In the PROFILER, you should use the Pick parameter in the amplifier module to achieve this effect. It has been optimized for controlling the energy of your pick and does this job much better than a regular compressor.

The Compressor is a faithful recreation of a vintage stomp compressor. We also added a new parameter, called “Squash”, to make this compressor even more versatile.