Today I got my Diamond Bass Compressor courtesy of Iain at guitarparts.co.nz.
I have been completely stoked with the service, in particular the communication; he let me know what was happening at each step, no surprise pedal on my doorstep. (The pedal had to be shipped to NZ from Diamond)
I'm glad that I took the the time to ask an NZ distributor to sort it out for me as the price was extremely competitive and I got warm fuzzies from helping a forum biz a little. When shipping was in his control, it was lightning quick. Very happy customer here, and I can see no reason I wouldn't go straight to him.
On to the pedal.
I've wanted a bass compressor for a very long time, and the Diamond had been the very top of the pile. I thought about trying some cheaper pedals out but I've finally learned that it's far better and cheaper to just save up and get the exact thing you're after.
It's an optical style compressor, which I quite like.
The BCP isn't a "utility" compressor as much as it's a phat-ner. It can do the limiting and peak suppression ok, but that's not its strong suit.
It makes your bass sound big, punchy, articulate, fat, and shiny. The compression has a fixed ratio so the compression knob dials in the amount of signal getting pushed into the compressor. All good.
The EQ on the BCP sounds great and is a useful addition. It uses a tilt style setting, meaning turn to the left you boost the bass and cut the treble, turn to the right you cut bass and boost treble. What I found was that with the EQ involved in the compression, I could turn the EQ on my amp off and sound great. I started using the EQ on the amp for subtle boosts and cuts rather than going mental on it, which was nice.
You don't need a whole heap of compression to sound good which is nice because at high settings sometimes peaks start popping through.
The Diamond Bass comp is the same in operation as the guitar compressor but has bigger value caps so more bass passes through. Also, the EQ function can be swiched between the guitar setting of 950Hz and the bass setting of 250Hz. Essentially that means the EQ "see-saw" tilts at a lower frequency for bass purposes. The great thing is that it will sound equally good on Bass or guitar.
Overall I'm very happy with how it makes my bass sound and I'm really impressed with guitarparts service.
Here's a pic of the bass board and the bass I was using
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