Parallel/NY Style Compression: Who uses the blend knob on their compressor pedal?

Hi folks. Who out there uses a blend knob on their pedal-style compressor to achieve NY/Parallel compression? What is your use case? How do you typically set up your compressor?

I recently upgraded to an Empress Bass compressor with both a blend knob and a HPF knob. I typically leave it at 2:1 and have adjusted the HPF to taste (somewhere around 9 if my memory serves). I leave to blend between 90-100% compressed signal and have been very happy with the pedal. With the HPF, I don't really see a personal need to touch the blend knob to achieve what I am going for.

Does anyone here rock a more NY style set-up with heavy compression and more uncompressed signal blended in? Why / what kind of sound do you achieve in doing so?

I'm more familiar with NY style compression as a mixing tool, largely on drums and am having trouble wrapping my head around how useful it could be (and when/why) on a bass pedal.

Not asking you to sell me on using blend, just asking for the sake of learning!
 
Blending a highly compressed bass tone with a dry one will typically result in a "fatter" tone, better sustain, evening of slightly dead spots, and more harmonic distortion. YMMV depending on the type of compressor and its settings. Parallel compression lets you get more aggressive in ways that would likely be totally unacceptable on their own without the dry blend. A lot of gray area in that blend, as it's a "mix-to-taste" thing that varies from very subtle to very prominent, depending on context and desired outcome. Parallel blending can resurrect the usefulness of an otherwise crappy sounding compressor (when that's all you have kicking around).
 
I have the same comp and tend to run it at 10:1 with blend at about 2 o clock and hpf at half 1 like this
 

Attachments

  • 20240402_203019.jpg
    20240402_203019.jpg
    1.7 MB · Views: 19
  • Like
Reactions: PineappleOwl
My Fermata doesn’t have a “blend” knob, but it allows me to send less of the low end through the compression circuit.

Based on your wording, I'm assuming this functions differently than a true HPF.

Does it attenuate the volume of the low end before sending it through compression? How does this work, is it a set frequency cutoff and a set db reduction?

How does it sound compared to a HPF?
 
Based on your wording, I'm assuming this functions differently than a true HPF.

Does it attenuate the volume of the low end before sending it through compression? How does this work, is it a set frequency cutoff and a set db reduction?

How does it sound compared to a HPF?
Not really sure, I just know it sounds good. Maybe checkout #ScubaDubas review on the Fermata.
I’ll find a link.
 
  • Like
Reactions: PineappleOwl
Based on your wording, I'm assuming this functions differently than a true HPF.

Does it attenuate the volume of the low end before sending it through compression? How does this work, is it a set frequency cutoff and a set db reduction?

How does it sound compared to a HPF?
It is an HPF but it’s not in the output signal path. It’s sidechained to the compressor’s detector circuit internally. You don’t hear it per se, but it stops the compressor from overreacting to low frequency content that can sometimes make it sound pumpy. It’s a useful tool.
 
While Compression in many cases is an always on effect for me, I think that parallel compression is quite overrated.

As jimfist said:

Blending a highly compressed bass tone with a dry one will typically result in a "fatter" tone, better sustain, evening of slightly dead spots, and more harmonic distortion. YMMV depending on the type of compressor and its settings. Parallel compression lets you get more aggressive in ways that would likely be totally unacceptable on their own without the dry blend. A lot of gray area in that blend, as it's a "mix-to-taste" thing that varies from very subtle to very prominent, depending on context and desired outcome. Parallel blending can resurrect the usefulness of an otherwise crappy sounding compressor (when that's all you have kicking around).

But this really is just a technical explanation. The resulting Sound is very particular and not what you want for most genres of music, both Live and in the Studio. That's why this kind of compression fell out of favor for a long time. The renaissance of this type of compression recently seems to me more to be due to the need of YouTubers to constantly provide new content.

On the other hand, looking at pedalboards of fellow bassist I often find parallel compression settings that realy contradict the idea of what parallel compression is about: Low Compression rates mixed with rather high amount of clean signal, resulting in almost no compression at all. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
But this really is just a technical explanation. The resulting Sound is very particular and not what you want for most genres of music, both Live and in the Studio.

IMHO, it all just depends, doesn't it? I'm not passing judgement on what I might think someone else wants or finds useful. Part of the journey for me is exploring techniques that yield interesting sounds. Yeah, maybe NY Comp yields crap results for a lot of use cases and maybe it doesn't. That has nothing to do with anything IMO. It is what it is. Like it or not, it's up to the user to decide.
 
  • Like
Reactions: red_rhino