Designed primarily for electric bass, the Bass Preacher from Electro-Harmonix is a compressor/sustainer in a compact form factor, the pedal measuring 2.8 x 4.5 x 2.1”. It’s designed to facilitate anything from subtle shaping to extreme adjustments in the dynamic range of your bass playing. The level of compression or sustain is achieved mainly with two parameters: The Sustain knob and the Attack switch.

The Sustain knob dictates the amount of compression you’d like to apply to your sound, while the Attack switch adjusts the attack/release settings, allowing more of your transients to come through for a plucky sound, or squashing your notes more quickly for a flatter, denser timbre. You’ll find fast, medium, and slow attack settings. Whatever amount of gain reduction you achieve, you can use the Vol knob to adjust the amount of makeup gain to reach a desirable level.

This pedal provides an input sensitivity range from -10 to +2 dBu, which makes the Bass Preacher suitable for use with active and passive basses alike. It also works well for guitar, providing a more subtle and transparent effect than typical guitar compressor pedals offer. With up to 21 dB of gain reduction, you’ll have more than enough room to achieve the compression you desire. True bypass circuitry ensures that in bypass mode, your signal is truly unprocessed.

This is a mono pedal, with one 1/4” instrument input and one 1/4" instrument output. It runs on the included 9V battery, though it will also work with the separately available Electro-Harmonix 9.6 VDC 200mA power supply.