When I was in my 20s I plugged my bass directly into my amp and that was that. I didn’t even have a pedal tuner in those days. I just tuned off the keyboard player. (“Gimme an A.”) It was many years later that I decided to get into pedals because people on the internet. Tuner, of course. But what else? Many people used compressors. So I read up on them, learned how they work and why you want one, and ordered myself an MXR M87 Bass Compressor.
It had great metering which helped me to see what it was doing. So I used it as an always on pedal. But after a couple of months I begin to wonder if it’s really doing anything for me. It’s so transparent that with moderate settings I couldn’t actually hear it doing anything.
Then one day I showed up for rehearsal without my pedal board. Oh, well. I’d played for years without any of that crap before, so on we go. It was about the middle of the second song when I realize that something is wrong.I have previously described it as like suddenly your underwear is on backward. You know something isn’t right, but you aren’t quite sure what it is. Some of my notes were honking out and dominating the mix and others were disappearing entirely. That’s when it occurred to me. No compression today.
From that day forward, I have been an ardent fan of compression on bass guitar. “But what about my dynamics, man?” Well if you’re playing a double bass in a jazz trio, you go on ahead with your dynamics. Meanwhile, compressed bass is the sound of modern music. It’s what allows studio engineers to get the bass nice and loud without it being out of control. And now I bring that same thing to every live performance that I do. I’ll never play without one again.
Just a couple of months ago I retired my old MXR. It had input level problems and my passive Sire wasn’t able to trigger it like I want it to. So, I ordered myself an Empress. Bliss!