The Bends Compressor Pedal Review

The bends compressor

love this pedal it keeps everything level i use it with the route 66 compressor together

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Easy, musical, quiet, great for guitar AND bass

Super easy to use. Always sounds good. There are no "bad" settings, just different compression effects. VERY LOW Noise and transparent. Zero audible pumping except on max settings; even then it's musical. You don't need an engineering degree to use this! The "light-pipe" knobs are nice on dark stages. That's a great functional feature and looks cool too. For travel gigs, I carry… read more minimum gear. Using batteries makes that easy. The new Fender style battery compartment is BY FAR the best design in the business. Battery changes take three seconds without disturbing anything else on a board. Using batteries instead of a power supply reduces cabling and power distribution hassles. Plus, I can fit the only two pedals I really need in my case or in the back of a small amp. Spare batteries take little space. For all you pedal-junkies out there, remember: BATTERIES are DC. So they always have less inherent noise than power supplies and are NEVER affected by ground loops or EM fields. Because of its low noise, this makes an excellent clean boost for driving the front end of amps or distortion pedals. That makes it good for going to 11 when your solos are getting buried in the mix. At jam sessions where we share an amp, this is the FIRST pedal in my chain. It goes directly into one of my preferred distortion pedals, then straight into the house amp. Most modern amps already have some effects like reverb, chorus, delay, etc. So I let the amp do all that stuff. So, all we really need is a good compressor that's easy to dial-in, and the right type of distortion. Although I use this mainly for guitar, it is SUPERB for Bass too. I hope Sweetwater IT people and sales-engineers list this among the BASS compressors along with others. I've played thousands of studio sessions with high-end compressors. I own dozens of compressors. This ranks high as one of my all-time favorites. Considering the simplicity, musicality, feature-set and reasonable price, I think it's a great value.

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Excellent Pedal

The build quality is very good, the pedal is heavy and feels substantial. The battery compartment design is innovative and implemented well, more robust than expected. The LEDs are quite bright, but the best aspect of the pedal is the sound. Unlike every other compressor pedal I have owned, The Bends does not introduce excessive noise to the signal. You can get the classic 'chicken… read more picking' sound, or totally squash the signal, or use the blend knob to subtly control your dynamics. Like most compressor pedals, it is best to start with the compression off, and set the level to unity gain, meaning that the pedal on level matches the pedal off level. The more extreme compression amount will reduce your output signal, but that is typical with any compressor. Fender really made a high quality, useful pedal at a reasonable price.

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