Hi
I saw an article on this but can’t find it now.
It was about the compressors in the Quad Cortex and the best place to put each compressor.
Some were at the start of the devices and some were at the end.
Does anyone know this ?
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There’s no ‘fixed rules’ , but :
- A compressor placed at the start of the chain (before the amp / overdrive pedal) will tighten the raw guitar sound , and will allows to have a more equal volume (hence the ‘compression’ term) even if you play louder / softer…
- A compresser placed at the end will mainly be used to ‘glue’ the sound (ie: allow the reverb to last longer, by raising the volume of the ‘trails’ of the reverb)
The fun thing is that you can experiment crazy things with the QC !
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Here’s an example of how I typically make my presets. Output 3 goes to a power amp and speaker cab, but before that I split off to Row 4. There I have a cab block and a compressor before sending out to Outputs 1 & 2, which go to FOH.
I typically use the Jewel or the Opto Comp as the first thing in the chain, for clean and edge-of-breakup tones only. I don’t use compressors for high gain; I’m more likely to get unwanted noise that way, and the amp compresses the signal anyway.
I’m a heavy modulation and delay user, so I typically put the Solid State Comp at the end of the chain. It is modeled after the classic SSL bus compressor, which is known In the mixing world as being a great “glue” for things like a drum bus. It’s also a good idea to do this because the sound person running your FOH audio may or may not understand how to use compression on their end. Here I’m only doing what I consider a light amount of compression–ratio of 2, 3 dB of makeup gain–just to keep things relatively in order.
To give credit where it’s due, I got the idea for using a compressor at the end of the chain from watching Ryan “Fluff” Bruce talk about it on his YouTube channel. Helpful advice.
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If I’m looking to use compression as an “effect”, like extra sustain or a violin-like envelope, I like to put a “pedal style" comp at the beginning of the chain. Keep in mind that this will tend to subdue differences in picking dynamics and ability to use your guitar volume to clean up or increase overdrive. If I just want to add some studio polish to the sound, I usually put a studio style comp block after the cab(s) but before reverb and delay blocks (not a fan of compressing R & D effects). This still allows using picking dynamics and your volume knob to control amp and “pedal" distortion. Another tip to mention; to keep picking articulation, try a slower attack setting and/or using the mix control to allow your pick attack to pop through. As mentioned, there are no rules…experiment!
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Thanks. I’ll take those ideas and use them sparingly. Is there a compressor and setting to use that would take the peaks of the signal ?
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keep in mind that you’ll also be fighting a noisier decay from most comps if you really push them, and your overall level thru overdrives or distortions may sound and respond ‘hotter.’ It can be a challenge to balance these factors.
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Thanks.
I’ll watch a some Youtube tutorials to try and get this to stay in my head.
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Yes, Xush brings up a good point. Running compression after amp and/or pedal distortion will exagerate noise created by all that gain. I don’t normally use a comp with higher gain presets so it’s never been a problem for my purposes. If you do want to use a comp with hi-gain, you’ll have less noise if you put it before the hi-gain stuff.
and I totally forgot the SIDE-CHAIN ability we now have, that can be really useful here.
Comps will fight noise-gates and this will have to be balanced- comps can introduce hiss when decay trails are amplified by Make-Up vol levels. Noise gates will fight this, but sometimes the results are less than optimum.
Side-chaining might help by putting a gate or compressor after amps but setting their source trigger to the DI signal/input. That way you’re getting the cleanest source of signal to activate the gate or comp
Just to add to your homework. You’re welcome!
Thank You. I think i’ll try sidechain later.