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VishNuRoXoUt « Decent compressor for the money. »
Published on 06/28/11 at 16:54The Line 6 Constrictor is one of the very rugged and extremely durable ToneCore series pedals. It's got a solid build and seems relatively indestructible. Standard input and output with a 9V adapter for powering. It has a very nice LED that is green when the pedal is engaged and turns red when there is a lack of power and it is unplugged. It has a Level knob that controls the overall level making this a good pedal if you want to use it as a boost. It has a sustain knob which controls the amount of sustain and compression you want. From lightly compressed to chicken pickin' squash. It has a gate knob that cuts down some noise but can further compress your signal making there be a bit of tone loss. Not so much so that I don't like this pedal though. Lastly there is a switch that changes the "compression dynamics", ranging from compact to squeeze to mellow. There are different levels of compression, I thought this was a cool switch, helps dial in exactly what you want.
UTILIZATION
It's pretty easy to set up. The manual is clear on how to get certain sounds. You can get some nice variations of compression out of this pedal and it really surprised me. I use it to get a little boost and liven up my clean tone. It works wonders for that. I play a lot of ambient stuff and like a lot of clean leads so this works extremely well for that. Very happy with the pedal in that aspect.
SOUND QUALITY
I use the pedal for my electric guitar only, but I'm sure it could handle other stringed instruments really well. It has a wide range of compression so it's fairly versatile in that sense. Obviously if you crank the sustain knob and gate knobs you'll be at a loss of tone. But that's what squashy compression does. This thing nails that and also much subtler "tone sweetening" compression. The only problem I have found sonically is that the pedal is very noisy when used in a daisy chain. I have it plugged in by it's own 9V adapter and it solved that problem for the most part. I couldn't be happier for the price of this pedal.
OVERALL OPINION
The pedal is built like a tank. It is very reasonably priced and it sounds pretty dang good. I've tried a few other compressors and this is definitely one of my favourites. It may not be the best, but it surely does what I need it to do. For the price you can find these pedals used, you would be hard pressed to find something better. I'd definitely recommend them to someone fairly new to compression.
UTILIZATION
It's pretty easy to set up. The manual is clear on how to get certain sounds. You can get some nice variations of compression out of this pedal and it really surprised me. I use it to get a little boost and liven up my clean tone. It works wonders for that. I play a lot of ambient stuff and like a lot of clean leads so this works extremely well for that. Very happy with the pedal in that aspect.
SOUND QUALITY
I use the pedal for my electric guitar only, but I'm sure it could handle other stringed instruments really well. It has a wide range of compression so it's fairly versatile in that sense. Obviously if you crank the sustain knob and gate knobs you'll be at a loss of tone. But that's what squashy compression does. This thing nails that and also much subtler "tone sweetening" compression. The only problem I have found sonically is that the pedal is very noisy when used in a daisy chain. I have it plugged in by it's own 9V adapter and it solved that problem for the most part. I couldn't be happier for the price of this pedal.
OVERALL OPINION
The pedal is built like a tank. It is very reasonably priced and it sounds pretty dang good. I've tried a few other compressors and this is definitely one of my favourites. It may not be the best, but it surely does what I need it to do. For the price you can find these pedals used, you would be hard pressed to find something better. I'd definitely recommend them to someone fairly new to compression.