MXR M87 Bass Compressor

My finger play is a bit uneven especially when playing for long. Wanted something to make it sound smoother and more even output. Easier than changing playing style. Was at first not really satisfied of the sound character. Almost gave up but then actually read the manual and started turning all of those knobs lika a maniac till i found "my sound". now i really like it. lots of knobs to turn actually help in this case. lots of possibilities with adjusting attack etc etc. I like the design and how it looks. the meter lights up quite pretty when hitting the strings hard. Had it for more than a year now and several gigs and it still looks good and runs without any problems so far. i would say it is difficult to make it sound as you want but when you succeed it's brilliant.

A really well constructed and great sounding pedal. I'm not going to say that the compression is smooth and transparent, but rather that it has the ABILITY to be smooth and transparent, which incidentally is how I have my own set. If you want extreme compression that you can really hear biting down on a signal, you can easily dial that in.

The biggest revelation for me has been in the studio. The pedal takes cues from the Urei 1176. Whilst in the studio recently, I tracked my vocalist through this pedal to and it did an incredible job: comparing very favourably with my Purple Audio MC77 (an 1176 clone that I have in the studio).

This is a compressor in compact pedal format offering a lot of the control you would expect from a studio compressor, in other words attack, release, ratio (presets) plus input level / threshold and output level controls. All the controls do what they are meant to do and it certainly compresses as expected, however it just isn't transparent and changes your sound and not for the better. You do get a punchier fatter sound, depending on how you set it up of course, but it changes your tone and you lose the character of your instrument. Maybe that's ok for some and depending on your rig maybe you won't notice, but for me it changed things too much so I didn't keep it.