Building upon the success of its predecessor, the silver Compressor MKII from Empress Effects packs high-end studio controls into a compact guitar pedal. Sporting Attack and Release controls, Mix for parallel compression, and a 500 Hz tilt-style tone control, Compressor MKII is like having a studio compressor rack on your pedalboard.
Compressor MKII is extremely transparent, maintaining your signal tone during dynamics processing, while the true bypass circuit similarly ensures a pure, uncolored signal once the pedal is disengaged. Switches are provided for ratio selection (2:1, 4:1, or 10:1) and the side-chain high-pass filter, which applies a 120 or 240 Hz low-cut filter to the handy 3.5mm TRS side-chain input. Built in Canada, this pedal features an all-analog signal path, delivering the smooth response only a true analog compressor can provide.
- Input gain control for adding saturation and increasing compression
- Attack control with a 50 microsecond to 50 milisecond range
- Mix control for wet/dry mixture, enabling parallel compression
- Ratio switch for determining how aggressive gain reduction is
- Output level control for makeup gain, does not affect compression
- Release control with 50 ms to 1 s range
- Tone control, which boosts treble and cuts bass (clockwise) or vice versa
- Side-chained high-pass filter helps avoid excess compression especially on bass
- 2:1: good for gentle gain control and very transparent
- 4:1: a great general purpose setting, 4:1 keeps your signal transparent but offers a large range of compression
- 10:1: heavy compression, close to limiting