Diamond Compressor

[tot_Ou_tard]

This is a great review of the Diamond Compressor (I have one);



Sweet sounding Hamer Daytona as well.

[SuperSwede]

Nice! I love compressors and this one sounds killer!

[tot_Ou_tard]

Nice! I love compressors and this one sounds killer!

It's often said that this is the compressor for those who hate compressors. I guess that there is room for those that love them too.

[SuperSwede]

It's often said that this is the compressor for those who hate compressors. I guess that there is room for those that love them too.

Well.... lets call it a love/hate relationship then....

[just strum]

Maybe it's the ears, but aside from volume, I hear no difference. For me I would be paying for an extra volume knob.

I have a compressor on my ME50 and played around with it for awhile and came to the same conclusion.

On the other hand I did notice the guys accent change when he hit the switch.

[tot_Ou_tard]

Maybe it's the ears, but aside from volume, I hear no difference. For me I would be paying for an extra volume knob.

I have a compressor on my ME50 and played around with it for awhile and came to the same conclusion.

On the other hand I did notice the guys accent change when he hit the switch.

There is a difference, but the Diamond comp is subtle (which is a good thing) at low levels of compression.


BTW, extra volume knobs are great. Try a clean boost, or an EQ pedal. These types of effects are much more my style than some heavily effected distorsion, fuzz, flanger, or phaser.

[just strum]

BTW, extra volume knobs are great. Try a clean boost, or an EQ pedal. These types of effects are much more my style than some heavily effected distorsion, fuzz, flanger, or phaser.

My style too, but what exactly should you hear from a compressor?

[tot_Ou_tard]

My style too, but what exactly should you hear from a compressor?

You probably don't need a compressor Strum.

There are several ways to use one.

As an obvious effect:

1) Completely squashed signal for chiken pickin' on a tele bridge pup.

2) Increased compression and sustain for overdriven guitar a la Trey Anastasio from Phish.

3) Bright jangly Byrds-style ric sounds.

As much fun as those are to play at times, my favorite use of a compressor is to add just a touch of bigness, and fullness to quiet clean to slightly driven sounds. It will help the passages to flow together and sound smooth. It works well into a modeling amp, if it is sounding thin or like its missing something.

A compressor narrows the dynamic range making the lound sounds quieter, which has the perceived effect of making the quiet sounds lounder. You can either enjoy this or hate it. Those that hate it have probably used too much of it & squashed all the fun out of their playing. The Diamond excells at the subtle end of the scale, but stills sounds sweet at the higher levels of compression. If you want deep squash, however, you should look elsewhere.

I tend not to use effects and the comp is no different, but it does have its uses and the Diamond sounds great with minimal alteration of tone while adding it's special magic. The EQ section on this is brilliant and very musical.

It's a tilt EQ that "tilts" the frequencies about a center frequency. Clockwise gives more treble and less bass, while counterclockwise does the converse. This allows you to move from warmth to bite very easily and naturally.

A cool thing is too crank the sustain & tilt the EQ towards a bright sound & play Beatles, Byrds, etc riffs on a single coil bridge.

Another use for it while learning is to turn it up while working on a hard hammer-on or pull-off. This will bring your weak attempt up in the mix so you can more easily work on it. As you get the hang, just turn the compression down while trying to maintain the same perceived volume. One can do the same thing if one is working on smoothing a transition.