Fender Bassman Compressor Review

On paper, there’s a lot to like about this one. It’s compact, reasonably priced, easy to understand, has a useful blend control, and gives you enough control over ratio and release to make it considerably more flexible than a basic one-knob compressor.

I'll cut right to the chase here.

I wanted to like the Fender Bassman Compressor more than I ultimately did.

After spending time with it, I came away feeling that the Bassman Compressor is more competent than compelling. It's a good compressor. It does the job. I just don't see it as doing anything particularly special. With that out of the way, here's the lowdown on why I feel this way about the Fender Bassman compressor pedal.

The Basic Design Is Good

Well, good design in some ways, but unfortunate in other ways. Fender did a nice job keeping the pedal approachable. You get Comp, Level and Blend controls along with switchable Ratio and Release settings. It gives you considerably more flexibility than the control count initially suggests, without turning the pedal into something overly complicated. Depending on what you are looking for that might be a good thing.

The numbered knobs are also a genuinely useful touch. If you use different basses or need different compressor settings for different gigs, it makes recalling settings much easier. From a usability standpoint, there is quite a bit Fender got right.

The Level control adjusts the compression signal volume. Turn it clockwise to increase the volume output of the pedal, post compression.

The Comp control adjusts the amount of compression applied (threshold/intensity). Turning it up increases how hard the peaks are squashed. The Blend control mixes your clean, uncompressed dry signal back into the compressed signal. This lets you keep your natural low-end dynamics and punch. Turn it clockwise to blend in more of your uncompressed dry signal. The Ratio switch offers two pre-defined ratio settings: • Down position: 4:1 ratio for subtle, natural dynamic control. • Up position: 8:1 ratio for more intense compression and peak limiting.

The Release switch offers two pre-defined release times • Down position: provides auto release for quickest response. • Up position: provides slow release time that can be manually adjusted using an internal Manual Release trim pot. Inside the enclosure are two additional trim pots for more tuning. • Attack Trim Pot: Adjusts how quickly the compressor reacts to the beginning of a note. Turn

more clockwise for longer attack time and counterclockwise for shorter attack time

• Release Trim Pot: Further fine-tunes how long the compressor holds the signal before letting go. It determines the release time when the Release Switch is at UP position. Turn more clockwise for longer release time an counterclockwise for shorter release time. Switching Release toggle down to auto release allows the pedal to dynamically adapt to your playing, releasing quickly on fast runs while smoothing out long held notes on the low B. It is actually quite useful. For example, when playing with fast plucks or slap style the release stays fast. This prevents "pumping" (where the volume visibly ducks and swells between quick notes).   When playing with sustained notes or deep heavy peaks the circuit automatically extends the release time to be slower. This prevents "chattering" or distortion on low frequencies like your 5-string's low B string.  The factory attack time is set fairly fast. When an attack is too fast, the compressor grabs the immediate transient of the lows before they can bloom, causing a choked feel. Pop open the back casing and turn the Internal Attack Trim to slow down the attack time. to allow the initial thump of a bass with a low B string to pass through uncompressed before the circuit kicks in. I find it quite necessary to slow the attack on this one.

I found I like best the two internal trims at around the 2:00 mark.

I would much prefer that the internal trims would be mounted on the outside of the pedal. Both of them are useful controls but who's really going to crack open their pedal to make adjustments? It's nice they are there but I don't find Attack timing and release timing to be simply set-and-forget. It's an unfortunate design decision to put these controls inside the enclosure.

There is a side-mounted active bass pad switch that softens high-output active electronics so you don't overload the input stage. You may or may not find this useful depending on how aggressivley you have the compression dial cranked.

The Fender Bassman compressor can be very subtle. If you want an aggressively, heavily squashed "effect" compression (or extreme limiting) this probably isn't the device for you. It can be made to feel almost too subtle. If you test it alone in a bedroom setting without a band context, I can see where you might barely hear it working until you turn it off. If the Comp knob is set past 10 or 11 o'clock with a 5-string bass, the low B string will trigger continuous gain reduction. More on that later.

The Gain Reduction Indicator Isn't Sensitive Enough

The Bassman uses the status LED as a gain reduction indicator. When the pedal is by the soft-relay footswitch, the LED illuminates white. As compression occurs, the LED changes from white toward red. I like compressor pedals with LEDs providing insight into how compression is reacting. Here though, it doesn't work particularly well.

For me, the indicator simply isn’t sensitive enough to consistently be genuinely useful.

It's there and it illuminates. But there are settings where you can clearly hear and feel compression taking place, but the LED gives you very little meaningful visual feedback about it. That matters more on a compressor than it would on almost any other pedal.

While you might not watch the LED while you're playing it should be useful and helpful when setting up the compressor.

Are you just shaving off peaks?

Are you getting several dB of gain reduction?

Are you compressing almost everything you play?

The Bassman really doesn't tell you much. And it's obviously compressing though the LED may not be illuminating, or at least consistently illuminating. There's no variability either. It's all or nothing.

You have to turn the Comp control up quite a bit before the compression seemed to noticeably engage the LED, so don't expect the LED response to be all that accurate.

You can certainly set it by ear and a trained ear will find it easy to dial in. That's ultimately how compressors should be set anyway. But if you're going to give me a gain reduction indicator, I'd like it to provide useful information. This one doesn't do enough.

The Tone Is...Fine

There's nothing really remarkable about the tone of the Fender Bassman compressor.

It doesn't sound bad. It doesn't add a bunch of noise. It doesn't fundamentally wreck the character of the bass.

It's just difficult to find anything about it sonically that makes me want to choose it over any other good compressor. That's not inherently bad though.

Some compressors have a personality. For example, some compressors have a particularly smooth feel (looking at you Walrus Mira). An 1176/FET-style compressor (like the Cali76 compressors for example) has a recognizable immediacy and punch. Other compressors add density, warmth, bloom or some other quality that becomes part of the reason you keep the pedal switched on (like the Abasi Micro-Aggressor, Lusithand Alma, or Pulp N Peel, for example).

The Bassman doesn't leave me feeling much of anything. It compresses. It evens out the instrument. It can make quieter notes more consistent with louder ones. But when I switched it off, I didn't find myself thinking that something incredibly important had disappeared from my sound.

With that said, that may be exactly what you look for in a compressor pedal. If you something unobtrusive enough to essentially forgot it that's a perfectly legitimate thing to want from a compressor. It's just that there is nothing remarkable about it.

The Blend Control Becomes Essential on a 5-String

One area where the Bassman isn't subtle is when running the compressor heavily wet on a 5-string bass. It simply sucks too much life out of the bottom end for me. The low B lost some of it's weight and openness and is much to aggressively compressed. The bass didn't necessarily become thin in the conventional sense. It was more that the very bottom of the instrument stopped feeling as alive.

And that is exactly the kind of thing I don't want a bass compressor doing.

Fortunately, the Bassman has a Blend control and it is the saving grace of this pedal. It's highly useful and once you start bringing the dry signal back in, the pedal gets considerably better.

The low end comes back. The attack feels more natural. The low B regains some authority.

The entire instrument feels more like itself again. So the Blend control absolutely works.

From my perspective, after playing through the Bassman compressor with a 5-string bass, I don't really consider the Blend control optional on this one.

I found that I absolutely needed to blend in dry signal to get a tone I liked.

There's an interesting detail here: The Blend control acts more like adding clean signal alongside the compressed path, with the dry level itself having gain available. That makes the control quite powerful. It also means there's a fair amount of interaction between Blend, Level and the perceived low end. Once I figured that out, I could get the pedal sounding considerably better. But the reality is I found myself using the controls to recover something the compressor had taken away. That's different from using parallel compression because I specifically want the feel of parallel compression.

Anybody playing four-string will almost certainly feel differently. The issue becomes more apparent when you're asking the compressor to deal with the fundamental energy of a low B. And that's the very reason why I test all compressors with multiple basses, and always at least one with a low B. A compressor that behaves beautifully on an E string isn't necessarily going to feel the same when you drop another five semitones. And then the internal attack and release settings can also make a big difference. Especially in coordination with the blend control. Again, play around with all of the controls to find the sweet spot for your instrument and playing style.

It Can Get More Aggressive Than You Might Expect

One thing I will give the Bassman credit for is range. This isn't a device limited to gentle always-on compression. It can get quite squishy and fat when pushed hard, and the switchable ratios give it more range than its simple appearance might suggest. This means that if you like obvious compression, the Bassman can do it. That's just not where I thought it sounded its best though. For my purposes, moderate to high compression (think 7 - 10 on the Comp dial) with a healthy amount of dry signal blended back in produced the most usable result. And even with that, the Fender Bassman isn't a compressor I'd actively reach for given other options. If money isn't an option, look at the Becos Mini compressor.

Final Thoughts

After using the Fender Bassman compressor with several instruments and different scenarios I to understand the appeal I've read about elsewhere. It's relatively inexpensive.

It is sturdy feeling. It's easy to operate. It has more control than most beginner-oriented compressors and you can get good results out of it without spending an hour tweaking attack, release, knee, sidechain filtering and every other parameter imaginable. It can get fat or remain subtle.

But the gain reduction meter is a let down. It's just not sensitive enough to be particulary useful. There's nothing about the fundamental tone of the compressor that I find especially compelling. With a 5-string bass, the low end gets robbed of too much life while the mids and highs can seemingly go untouched. That's where you need to turn up the compression and blend in the dry to compensate. None of these things makes it a bad compressor. They just keep it from being a compressor I'd personally particularly enjoy using. The price is right at just $149 retail price at the time of writing. At the end of the day, what it does, it does decently. It does do the basic job a bass compressor is supposed to do and that alone could be reason enough to buy it. It's not necessarily a bad device, it's actually a pretty decent compressor. It's a reliable, smooth compressor. It's just that it's just too ordinary for me. I'd encourage you to work with the controls to find the sweetspot for your particular playing style and instrument. Give it some time. I actually prefer the auto release setting and an adjusted slower attack time.

The build quality of the Fender Bassman compressor seems great. Input and output jacks are top mounted, as is the 9 volt power input which I personally prefer. Foot switch is true bypass. There is room inside the enclosure for a 9 volt battery to power the pedal. It's also pretty quiet which is nice. Pros: • Price • Feels solid • Decently versatile • Decently configurable Cons • Nothing about it is remarkable • LED gain reduction meter is poorly implemented • Internal trim controls should be externally mounted • Blend control is essential with a 5-string bass • Can be too subtle Buy it on Amazon or Sweetwater. Retail price: $149 Fender.com