Review : PRS Mary Cries Compressor
Hello folks. I suppose that some of you are thinking, “man, is he on about yet another compressor?” The answer is, why yes I am. Why another compressor? A couple of simple reasons really. First is that I am a compressor dork. I love great compressors and hate all the others. By others, I mean any compressor that is obviously present and is squishy. I get that some folks like squishy compressors and if you are one of those folks, good for you and there are certainly lots to choose from including the MXR Dyna Comp or the simple Keeley Compressor, which is IMO, the best of the squishy ROSS style compressors.
In my world, I like the sound of subtle studio compressors including the Universal Audio 1176 Limiting Amplifier that is FET based and my favourite being the Teletronix LA2A currently available from Universal Audio. These are rack mount compressors and while awesome in a studio, less well suited for live work. The LA2A is an optical compressor, and for general use, I tend to like these more because they are very subtle. Other optical compressors that I recommend are the Diamond Compressor or Diamond Jr Compressor, which you will have to find used as Diamond has closed their doors to my great disappointment as Angus and the team built awesome pedals, and the more recently announced Atlas compressor from Source Audio. I wrote a piece about Source Audio a while back and love every piece of their kit that I have tried and bought.
Recently, Paul Reed Smith announced their first guitar pedals. If you have never played a PRS, you own it to yourself to try one. I own more PRS instruments than any other make, and every single one of them is unique and was wonderful new out of the box. My first couple of PRS guitars were bought used, and after a setup and new strings remain wonderful as well.
This time, I am looking at my recently purchased PRS Mary Cries Compressor. I bought it sight unseen and unplayed, partly because I have never been really let down by a PRS product and partly following seeing Paul on The Pedal Show.
Introduction
The Mary Cries is a stomp box compressor. It’s about 1.5x wider than a general Hammond cased stompbox. I do not know why it’s larger but it is so plan for that on your board. It has a silent on/off switch and two knobs. The top knob sets the Output Gain as sometimes you can lose some volume with compression and you can also use the Mary Cries as a clean boost with no compression set. The lower knob sets the level of compression. There are no options for Attack, Release, Threshold or Knee and there is no software that will allow you to dig into the settings as you can on the Atlas with the excellent Neuro software from Source Audio.
During his time on TPS, Paul mentioned the presence of the small LED. It was installed to show when compression is happening according to Mr. Smith. Optical compressors are by their nature quite subtle. I was a bit surprised by how aggressive I had to be with this knob to get any compression happening at all, and if you look at the documentation, you will see that some of the recommended settings have the knob full up. Personally I would like a wider sweep on the control for finer control of the compression level.
For the cost, I would also like to see controls on the box, as there is certainly enough space, for at least attack and release settings, although in fairness a rack-mount LA2A only has two knobs, one for peak reduction (compression) and one for gain (output volume) so as Paul says if this is a pedal version of the LA2A and he does say so, the implementation is consistent with the real thing.
How Does It Sound?
It sounds transparent, even with the compression setting cranked, and so even if I personally like more controls, as an always on pedal, which I personally like to use a compressor for, it does a stellar job. I moved my Atlas compressor to another board to make space for the Mary Cries and the Atlas is a very tough act to follow. The Atlas has a lot more control and does more than just optical compression, however since I tend to prefer optical compressors, the use of the Mary Cries has not had any negative impact. That board feeds a Radial Amplifier switcher which can output to one of four amplifiers. The amps are a Boogie Mark V, a PRS Dallas, a Marshall Custom Super Lead, and a Marshall JCM 2500. For my sample recordings, I was using the JCM 2500 connected through a UA Ox Box via fibre optic cable to a UA Apollo Twin X, with the recording done in Logic Pro. You can judge for yourself whether you like the sound.
Samples
The first guitar that I used for the recording is a ‘59 Custom Shop Gretsch White Penguin with everything at ten and the pickup selector in the middle position. It’s just a joy to play. I connected it to the board using a Line 6 Relay G30 Wireless system, with the Cabletone option turned off. I choose not to use the cabletone option as if I want to lose high end as happens with cable capacitance over distance, there are tone controls or parametric equalizers that can do that. The board itself is very busy with pedals but all were off except the Mary Cries. As I prefer the presence of some reverb, I am using the in amplifier reverb instead of pedal based reverb for the sample recordings. In the sample clip, the first section is the White Penguin through the board with no effects to the JCM 2500, and then through the OX to the Apollo. The second section, which is repeated a few times, is the White Penguin with the Mary Cries set for maximum compression and unity gain to the JCM 2500. the OX and to the Apollo. In the recording the differences are subtle, but you can see the differences in the waveform
In the screen capture waveform below you can see a difference in how the dynamics are captured, in the second group where the Mary Cries is active, you can see a greater variance in signal amplitude and a more even peak level. It’s subtle, just as promised. When watching the LED on the Mary Cries it is obvious when compression is happening and when it is not. Although there are no attack and release setting options, I can tell you that the attack is quite fast and the release is reasonably quick, so the Mary Cries by not being squishy isn’t a compressor that is built first to create sustain. You do get some sustain of course because it lifts the low amplitude signals slightly, but not the same way as a squishy compressor does.
My Conclusions
I like the Mary Cries as an always on compressor. I do wish the compression knob had a wider range of control of when compression kicked in, and while I intend to keep the unit, if I were buying my first compressor, this would not be it. The Mary Cries has a MAP price of $285 CAD. For a bit more money at $339 CAD, the Source Audio Atlas provides the LA2A capability, but can also do five other compression models. I tend to use my Atlas in LA2A mode all the time and always on so I’m not leveraging all its capability, my loss. In the case of the Mary Cries, it will be always on, on the board where it goes to live.
Thanks as always for reading. Please subscribe to receive notifications of new articles. Until next time, peace.
