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Dec 1, 1999 12:00 PM, Barry Cleveland

           
 

CARL MARTIN Compressor/Limiter One of the Holy Grails of vintage effects pedals is the TC Electronic Parametric EQ/Sustainer. It features studio-quality EQ and compression circuitry packed into a stompbox and originally sold for several times more than the competition. To buy a used one today, you'll have to spend some serious coin. Fortunately, Carl Martin has produced a new line of pedals that, much like the old TC pedals, are handmade in Denmark, come housed in rugged metal casings, and sport high-performance components.

The Mettle of the Pedal The Carl Martin Compressor/Limiter ($249.95) can produce some of the same sounds as the old TC Parametric EQ/Sustainer (less the EQ, of course), but it has far more parameter control and sonic flexibility. In fact, it has more features than any dynamics pedal I am aware of, and it sounds better than many rack-mount processors, at least when used with guitars and basses.

The unit features most of the parameter controls you would expect to find on a rack unit: threshold, compression ratio, response (which simultaneously controls attack and release times), and makeup gain. What's more, it has an LED that functions as a gain-reduction meter. This clever circuit causes the Busy LED to glow brighter as compression is increased, and even indicates potential gain reduction while the pedal is in bypass mode. Because the Compressor/Limiter has the same controls as a pro unit, you'll achieve better and faster results if you know something about how compressors operate. If you do, you'll be able to dial in a good basic sound almost immediately and quickly get a feel fo r the wide range of options that each control offers.

After using the Compressor/Limiter for a month, I came to appreciate just how flexible and sophisticated it actually is. For starters, the amount of compression is continually variable between 1:1 (no compression) and brick-wall limiting. Similarly, the threshold is continuously variable over a range of 60 dB, enabling you to add just a touch of limiting on the peaks, or squash a signal into total submission. The controls are highly interactive, though finding your way back to a particular setting can sometimes be difficult because there is no display to indicate precise values (it is a pedal, after all). Nonetheless, the controls are also fairly intuitive, and once you get used to them it i s relatively easy to find a suitable setting by ear.

A Few Applications Adjusting the Compressor/Limiter to produce just a few decibels of gain reduction, with a moderately slow attack, made my guitar sound so good I was tempted to leave it on all the time. I also used it to produce lots of other useful effects, such as altering the attack envelope of lightly picked single notes, squashing overly dynamic rhythm parts, brightening up dull acoustic guitars, and adding lots of sustain to both clean and distorted tones. Speaking of distorted tones, the unit has more than enough bite to control even the most over-the-top distortion devices, and when placed between a good distortion pedal and a decent amp or mixer, it produces a fat, creamy sustain for days. The pedal also sounded great with electric bass, and even worked well on fat synth bass sounds.

Typical compressor artifacts such as pumping and breathing were practically nonexistent. However, at extreme settings, the Compressor/Limiter did boost high frequencies and produce a somewhat metallic sound. It was also a little noisy on some settings, though overall the unit is exceptionally quiet, particularly when compared with other dynamics pedals.

Although the Carl Martin Compressor/Limiter is not exactly inexpensive, you definitely get what you pay for. I've tried lots of dynamics pedals (including the TC Parametric EQ/Sustainer), and nothing rivals this one in sound and versatility. This box rocks! A

Overall EM Rating (1 through 5): 5

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