Extensive compressor reviews and FAQ

Wholenote BLM-270: This is Wuhan Daphon's copy of the Boss LMB-3. See my review of their E20CM for an explanation of the company and their brand names.
 
The tone is exactly the same as the Boss: dry, clean, not doing any "magic" like fattening or adding sparkle or whatever, but also not muddying the instrument's sound. The noise level is fairly low, though not silent. The action is natural and unobtrusive, unless you set the ratio very high and the threshold very low; then it becomes noticeably squishy. The wide range of ratio allows it to be used as anything from a subtle smoother to a hard peak limiter, and it does quite a good job with the limiting. There is no loss of lows at all; the highs get rolled off some during heavy compression, but they return as the comp releases.
 
Just as with the actual LMB-3, the Enhance knob here is awful--it should really be labeled "Do Not Use". It's an EQ that cuts a notch at around 2 KHz and then boosts everything above 3 KHz, and mostly serves to increase the hiss and other noises in your signal chain.
 
The housing is an extruded aluminum shell anodized with a pretty shade of purple, and the construction quality is average, about what you'd expect for the price. It's larger than the BBE/Diamond "medium" pedal size, but not as big as the Markbass. It runs on standard Boss-type 9V DC. There is no LED to indicate the amount of compression. The footswitch is not "true bypass", but the bypassed tone is clear. All in all if you want a Boss LMB-3 and can't find a used one at this price, or if you really prefer something large and purple, then this pedal is a good value.
 

 
 
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