tc electronic Forcefield Compressor

I purchased the pedal with the intention of using it with a classic Stingray through a Markbass amp.

I have it sitting at the end of my effects chain and after playing around with settings for a week, it has done what it promised. That is, it has taken an unruly, aggressive horse of a signal and given it balance and clarity. If you play a Stingray or a bass with a similarly pronounced and nuanced character, it is a great addition to your armory. It will lend balance. You know the way your Stingray demands that you play with a bit more finesse and deliberation? That's not a bad thing in itself. But when you're playing live and your fingers go searching for volume and pronunciation in the heat of battle, a compressor will temper your worst tendencies and lend you a balance and consistency of tone that you might not have thought that you needed.

The build is robust, a metal casing that will provide stability and consistency going forward. The settings knobs are solid and clear in that they do what they proclaim to do. The top-set IOs are eminently practical. It does say the wattage is 100W on the casing but 9W is the reality.

For the price (€40 in Feb 2022), it's amazing. Makes a big difference to my tone, which is exactly what I was missing. It lacks features available in pricier compressors but as a basic tool at this price point, it excels. I'm very happy thus far and hope others will be too. Plus, come on. €40 for a quality piece of engineering should not be missed.

A few weeks ago I didn't even know what a compressor does nor did I think that I'd even want one. I always thought it would take away from the dynamics of my playing and make the sound frankly a bit dull.

To be honest: I was really blown away testing the TC Forcefield. At first you don't even recognise that there is a change in the colour of your tone. But it's really dramatic when you turn the effect off after a while: You'll miss something that can't even be properly explained.

Kicking in the effect once again it's like a veil being drawn from your speakers, it' like a presence knob being pulled at your amp, it's like you had changed your run of the mill pickups for some boutique hand-wounds. (And that's without even going beyond noon with the attack and sustain).

I would highly recommend for anyone to check out a compressor pedal because if you don't, you might miss out.

Are there any compressors that do it better? Honestly, I don't know. I've only played this one.
Is it "studio-quality"? I guess not, but who cares?
Is it cheaper than any competition on the market? I guess so.
Is it also (extremely good) value for money? Hell yeah!
Should you at least try compression for once? You bet your bellybutton!

I'm really happy with this purchase. It plays well with other pedals too...

I needed a compressor for 3 uses:
-as a country guitar "spanky" effect
-as an always on bass compressor
-as outboard gear for recording and mixing.

I found it extremely pleasing at everything, I've used it on
active 5-string bass, fretless hollow 4-string bass,
el.guitars tuned from C standard to high A standard,
and recording vocals and drums.

The Attack knob does wonders and along with the sustain knob
you can have from mild, really spanky compression to ironing limiting.

Unfortunately unless you have the sustain knob past 9 o'clock,
the level knob won't actually boost the volume, so you can't
have it set to a very slight compression without volume loss.
Well, it's not a problem for me, a lot of classic and more expensive compressors have the same issue.

Finally, it doesn't color the tone much, I find that it only reduces the really extreme and harsh treble you'd never want, also it does have the feeling of a real, hardware compressor, most of the times in the studio I prefer it to any plugin.

I'm definitely buying another one!

Overall, really good for bringing up the quiet parts while keeping the louder ones under control!

Long review:
One of the pieces of gear I took the longest to get to know and use. Maybe it's just the nature of a compressor, but I could never really get it to do exactly what I expected it to do. This, however, was most likely because of my unreal expectations (I expected something probably more along the lines of 'never ending sustain').

What I found it was great for, however, is more along the lines of what a compressor actually does (DUH), and that is bringing up the quiet stuff while keeping the loud stuff at a similar level.
To me, this is incredibly obvious only when tapping, otherwise I have to really try to emphasize the dynamicness while picking. This is probably just my untrained ears though.

I also found it useful while playing with bandmates as it made sure I was around the same volume all the time.

Another thing you could use this for is to have it set up after your drive so it squashes things down a bit, but not too much, and reduces volume a bit, and use that as a rhythm tone, and then turn it off for the lead tone, which I did for a while as well. Works great if you don't do a lot of legato, in my opinion.

Only thing I wish it had was a blend knob because it would make it much easier to see what it's doing, in my opinion.

After accumulating a few budget compressor pedals, I decided to A/B them all to see which one I would be keeping and which ones I would depart with. Sadly this one was not the chosen one, as I found it to be somewhat noisier than other alternatives in the same price range.

The fact that it was a very large pedal also played a role, although as a general rule I praise this line of TC Electronic pedals, as they are invariably build like tanks.

A decent enough compressor for starting out with, however the slight noise and lack of blend knob mean you will probably find better alternatives in brands like Nux.