Taking everything that made Compressor great and retuning it for bass guitars, the blue Empress Effects Bass Compressor packs high-end studio controls into a compact guitar pedal. Sporting Attack and Release controls, Mix for parallel compression, and a unique Tone + Color control, Bass Compressor is like having a studio compressor on your pedalboard.

Bass Compressor 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.

Studio-Style Control

• 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

External Side-Chain Input The 3.5mm TRS side-chain input provides an incredibly useful studio feature in an exceptionally compact form factor. Use the jack as a send and return for side-chain compression triggering. Additionally, the circuit comes with a variable high-pass filter that filters out between 20 and 400 Hz low frequencies from the side-chain. Tone + Color With the Tone + Color switch, you can add some mild harmonic distortion to your tone. You can also select between a midrange cut or an upper-midrange boost. Ratio Selection

• 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

True Display LEDs Bright multicolor LEDs always let you know what the compressor is doing. Continuing the theme of high-quality studio features in a low-profile stomp, Compressor MKII includes a 10-stage LED meter for gain reduction (-1 to -25 dB) and a 5-stage LED meter for input gain (-2 to -14 dB).