Fender makes some pretty awesome guitars and amps so when I found a used version of The Bends in my local store, I wanted to give it a try.

For those for whom the idea of a compressor is not clear, or who just want a simple understanding of what compression really is and why one might care, I have a post on the subject coming.

Onto The Bends

The Bends is a traditional guitar compressor in that it uses an analog circuit not based on an op-amp.  Unlike many similarly priced tools, it provides a lot of controls to the user including Drive (compression), Recovery (sustain), Level and the most critical to me, Blend, so you can mix the wet and dry signals to suit.

My first impression was that in what I expected would be middle ground, the unit seemed to be doing nothing.  One use of a compressor is to provide more sustain and this one really needed the release knob cranked all the way up to really sense any significant change.  Even at this point, the sustain, while improved, was not that much better.  Considering that this is a new pedal, I expected more than what I would hear from a 30 year old MXR Dyna Comp.  Not this time.

The unit is very quiet when engaged.  Gradually increasing the drive control increases the amount of compression.  Fully wet, the sound is unpleasant with a significant loss of highs.  Increasing the blend in favour of the dry signal improves the overall tone, but instead of a nominal thickening as expected, it sounds more like a high pass filter.

When pushing the drive past the halfway point, distortion started to creep in.  Compressors should not distort.  They may add the illusion of boost at the expense of dynamic range (at least lesser ones do) but distortion is a no-no.  This distortion while slight was enharmonic and not pleasing at all.

It was easy to use the Level control to match the engaged volume with the disengaged volume, and also to set it for a little bit of boost if one were to use the compressor only for solos,  Personally I would rather use a proper boost pedal after a compressor but to each his or her own.

It was passable with high output humbuckers, but with lower output single coils such as in a Telecaster bridge, or Fender Vintage Noiseless in one of my Strats, I really had to crank the drive to get the compression to engage at all.  The operating lamp is white when the compressor is on, and glows pink when compression is happening.  In a perfect world you would have a scale to see how much compression is happening, but this is mostly on or off.  In addition to the operating LED, you can activate LEDs built into each of the knobs.  This is quite nice in a really dark environment, but you will not like it if you are using the unit as part of your practice rig at home because at night, those little blue LEDs are like runway lights.  There is an external switch to turn them on and off.

While The Bends has more control options than a less expensive old style Dyna Comp, in my testing it did not sound as good.  I felt I lost too much tone, particularly on single coils and did not get enough extended sustain.  The distortion in the drive settings made this unit a non-starter for me.

The Bends sells for about $170 here in Canada and is widely available.  if you like compressors, you might be inclined to give one a try in an amenable music store, but do some comparisons with other alternatives.  I think that you can do better for less money.