Best Compressor for Bass?

[PhiloB]

I'm ignorant to bass players needs and my buddy couldn't articulate.  What project would you recommend for bass player who does a lot of slap/funk?

[jkokura]

Pretty much any one. I don't think that Compressor pedals are generally tailored only to guitar frequencies. In any case, I've used a variety of DIY comps with my Bass and all have worked really well. Try whichever you'd like to.

Jacob

[midwayfair]

Ask him what he wants the compressor to do to his notes. You can tease it out of him. Just playing slap and funk bass isn't enough to tell us that, though it does kind of inform which ones aren't going to work. Does he want a brick wall limiter (minimal attack, high ratio)? Does he want the compressor to dip and swell back up, similar to how he might use an envelope filter (minimal attack, short decay)? Or does he want his transients untouched and have the bass compressed, so that the compressor brightens up his sound (blend circuit -- or actually the treble bypass in the Engineer's Thumb works like this). Does he care about distortion -- heck does he WANT distortion? Can he point to a sound with compression on it that will help? Is his bass active or passive?

In any case, I'd recommend a compressor with the option for all five controls. I'd avoid anything involving an OTA chip with an active bass, and I'd only really consider the Engineer's Thumb with a Fender bass I think (those peak around 4V, and you can't go higher than 5V on the ET ... green LEDs at the input will clamp it to ~2V on each side of the wave regardless, so you'll probably STILL get some distortion, but it'll be a lot better than the OTA distorting). The headroom is a major consideration for a slap player, because they are NOT gentle at all, and they will definitely be creating huge spikes.

I'd also avoid anything optical if he wants a short attack. The best attack you can reliably get out of most optical devices is around 20mS. The VTL5C1 is pretty fast but you still aren't going to get immediate, so it will never do brick wall in the way a decent FET (or OTA ...) will.

Depending on his answers to the above questions, I can give a more specific answer, or even suggest modifications.

[irmcdermott]

I agree with Jacob. I've built an Afterlife (madbean baby board), Demeter Compulator, Orange Squeezer, Ross, and a few others, and they all sound fine on my rig. I don't slappadabass very often, but I'd imagine any of the them would be fine.

Right now I have an ET with a clean blend on my bass pedalboard. Sounds great.

[thesameage]

I'm getting ready to build an afterlife for my bass... hope it sounds good! Would it be worth it to change gears and go for an engineer's thumb instead? I'm looking for more of a tone enhancement/evener/expander than something to facilitate a slap sound.

[Jopn]

Do what I did, build yourself an Engineer's thumb with all the knobs possible, get your buddy to give it a whirl for a week or so to find which knobs they twirl and which ones they set and forget.  Then build them a fewer knobbed version that they can feel is "custom tailored" to their needs.

[GermanCdn]

Yeah, a five knob ET is probably the way to go.  My personal preference is a Dyna workalike, but that's probably more to do with the fact that I'm a crappy bass player and I hate my bass amp (next one I get is going to have no more than five knobs, all the crap Hartke dreams up is definitely not streamed at someone who wants to be able to dial in a decent tone quickly), and for whatever reason it makes both of those things less offensive in my playing.

[thesameage]

Can you make the JMK pcb of the ET a 5 knob?

[GermanCdn]

Can you make the JMK pcb of the ET a 5 knob?

Yes you can, just follow the mod notes in the build doc from Jacob.  R3, R4, and R5 can all be put on pots with some tweaking to individual tastes.

[GrindCustoms]

For me, too much knob on a Comp is working at missing the sweet spot, i mean.... the way controls interact on a comp is not something intuitive as on an OD or Fuzz per exemple. You can easily just never get what you want because of one thing that is done wrong with it.

I'd also try to avoid any type of compressor that tend to «pump» even at lower ratio, it's just not musical on bass.

So my suggestion narrows down to two comps, those that have always given the good for me, Optical(Afterlife) and JFET(LoveSqueeze/GCFX RottenKomp).

[Droogie]

+1 on the Rotten. Also Demeter Compulator is easy to dial in.

[PhiloB]

Thanks for all the feedback!  Very helpful.

[jimilee]

They are so set up to taste. The one I use is the EHX soul preacher. I've built a ton and I like this one the best. Unfortunately I haven't seen a build for one. I picked it up here for about 25.00

[thesameage]

I'm at a little bit of a crossroads. I need to put in a smallbear order and wanted to just get my comp parts at the same time. I was planning on the afterlife, but the ET sounds good, too. Any thoughts on what I should go with (subjective opinions withstanding). I like a bass compressor that isn't too squashy, but just gives some nice tightness and definition to notes along with a little bit of sustain. Should I stay the course with the afterlife? I already have the board. Or order a new one from JMK and change course?