Xotic SP Compressor

Xotic SP Compressor is mini pedal, but with excellent features. Although mini in size, features put to shame many larger pedals on the market.

Pedal is build as mini pedal, but it is quite high, so when put on pedal board you will find it easy to step on and switch it off/on. This is a big plus if you are going to use it as solo booster, later in pedal chain.

In front of you will get volume, blend and compressor/sustain options, but under the hood there is 4 dip switches that will change this compressors attack/release time, high cut and low cut filters. Amazing number of options in such a small enclosure.

With blend control you can get from gentle and transparent boost to high squished country twangs.

This is very versatile compressor, high quality build and amazing number of options.

Pedal came with battery included and quick guide with sample setting. Nice.

I tried it with single coils and humbuckers and got very good results. Recommended.

I knew Xotic made great pedals as I already have an Xotic EP Booster in my guitar rig. I'd been looking for a better compressor pedal for some time (my Marshall ED1 was getting a bit long in the tooth) and as soon as I read that Xotic had released the SP Compressor, I knew I had to try it. Once I watched reviews and listened to clips on YouTube, I knew I had to have it! But even this hadn't prepared me for how much I would fall in love with this pedal.

It's small. In fact, it's really small. Shorter and narrower than almost every other pedal I have (albeit slightly taller), and I think it would probably survive a bomb attack. But it's not the construction that makes this pedal special. It just sounds "right" - it enhances and smooths out your guitar sound without introducing extraneous noise or impacting your playing negatively. It's perfect for helping clean guitar sounds jump out in the mix and compete for volume with more overdriven tones. And it works great with both single coils and humbuckers (most compressor pedals I've tried don't get on with humbuckers).

In summary, if you're looking for a compressor pedal, this is the one to buy!

Feature-wise, this compressor comes short compared to most contenders, but sound-wise it doesn't! Some of the more advanced stomp box compressors let you adjust attack and realease times as well as knee shape and such, but I feel that is for studio work. When you're mixing, you'll most often want to compress your guitar signal at that stage anyway, and a surgical compression is thus redundant when recording.
This box let you you blend your uncompressed and compressed signal to your liking, giving you plenty of control in a live situation, as well as making sure you don't overload your recording chain/converter in the studio, if you're recording somewhat hot.
There's an option of high/mid/low setting of the compression itself, which makes a huge impact on your tone.