| Ease Of Use |
Any compressor can be tricky to get the right sound out of due to its nature. Everything will affect the sound of compression, from the output of your guitar, to the overall volume and gain in your amp. A number of pedal compressors are very simple in their settings, generally just Level and Gain. The Carl Martin is a different beast altogether. It is a very good equivalent to a rack mounted studio compressor in a pedal. As such, it has some different settings (threshold, comp, resp, gain). These can be tricky to dial in correctly, especially since some of the parameters affect the others. If in doubt, you can always e-mail Carl Martin and they're good to explain how all the parameters work together. There is some good information on their web page for this product as well.
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| Sound |
I primarily used this in my 5150 head's effects loop, right after the preamp and before any modulation or delay. I used it in all settings, clean or high gain. I like compression at this stage, it give your tone that polished, studio edge when dialed in properly. When used here it's something you'd set up like compression for a clean tone, it's more of overall leveling effect, and keeps everything even and thick.
I've used the Carl Martin as well for clean sounds in front of an amp, before the input, and again it works very well here too, but would need to be dialed in differently.
I've tried a few other compressors, some very high end/boutique units, and short of going with a full dbx rack mount compressor, this is the best I've ever used for a floor unit. Some other compressors change your tone, and that is desirable in certain cases, some pedals are sought out for that reason, but that's not what I was looking for.
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| Reliability |
Heavy duty construction, solid switch, built in transformer, solid jacks. I would have no hesitation to play with this in the nastiest dive. The only concern I'd have with it is that it's a taller pedal than most and it's easy to bump the knobs when switching other pedals that might be behind it.
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| Customer Support |
I e-mailed the guys at Carl Martin once with a question about settings, and they responded within a business day or two. The response was helpful with explaining how the pedal works and what the different settings do, and how they affect each other.
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| Liked about it |
The best thing about this pedal is that it was virtually transparent tone-wise. The fact that it does double duty as a limiter or a compressor was an added bonus. Did I mention it's built like a tank, with a built in transformer, no wall-wart or battery.
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| Didn't like |
It is a tough pedal to dial in properly, but then compression is tougher than most effects to dial in. It is a little on the large size, and may not play nice with your other pedals on a pedal board.
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| Overall satisfaction: |
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4.0 |
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