9 of the Best Compact Enclosure Compressors

Anyone who’s read my blog regularly will know that I’m a huge fan of Foxpedal’s output, and their 5-knob Refinery V2 is another great offering. This model is based on Valve Wizard’s Engineer’s Thumb circuit which uses an LM13700 Operational Transconductance Amplifier (OTA) - a modern version of the CA3080 chip that was core to the original Dynacomp compressors. Foxpedal add a touch more finesse to the circuit - with full-range controls for Attack, Release, Level, Ratio and Blend, and a toggle for more brightness. Version 3 may replace the toggle with a full-frequency tone or presence dial. Another less-often-featured but exceptional compressor.

The Optical Compressors have a significant noise-floor advantage over the more typical VCA / Dynacomp style ones - and this Greer Amps one is a particularly good example of this. Possibly not quite as feature-rich as some, it does have the pretty essential Mix / Blend dial, alongside Volume, Treble and Compression - with Release time set via 3-way toggle, Medium, Fast or Slow. At one stage I was considering getting the Pigtronix Micro Philosopher’s Tone Compressor - also optical, but kept coming back to this Greer. As it was, I then decided that there were other compressors that appealed to me a little more - definitely worthy of consideration though.

I featured this very recently on ‘Glance’ - as soon as I watched the above video, I knew this was the one for me. I’ve had the Jackson Audio Prism Boost/Buffer/EQ/PreAmp for quite a while now, and the Bloom actually tackles a few of my feature requests for that - full 3-Band EQ, separate secondary Boost Switch and ‘Presets!’. I’ve always thought the Prism could have done with a secondary boost, buffer state toggle, and a mid frequency control dial. Though if used in combination with the Bloom - that pedal adds most of what the Prism is/was missing. For me this is the smartest Compressor pedal out their currently (or soon to be). It arrived at a very fortuitous time too, as I was right on the point of going for a Cali76 Compact Deluxe - which is of course still amazing - I just find this one is more my type!

Robert Keeley has become best known for his Compressor pedals, and this is still most likely his best-selling pedal - while the competition for boutique compressors has heated up a lot since Keeley’s heyday really. This industry-standard 4-pot compressor does just what you need it to do without some of the more contemporary additions. The majority of pedals on this page are 5 dials or more - but the Keeley does of course have that essential ‘Blend’ one. Simple and effective - and very reasonably priced too!

Another Optical Compressor and one in pretty much direct competition with the Greer Lamplighter above - both are exceptional pedals and do much the same thing at much the same price. There’s a very slight difference in control topography here - with a mini Release dial here instead of the 3-way toggle of the Greer above. Not much between those two at all - they both even have top-mounted jacks! I guess it all comes down to availability and colour / graphics choice in some respect.

I love my Origin Effects RevivalDrive, and they have become the go-to maker now for pro compressor pedals. Seems like they have slightly usurped Keeley to a degree, but to be fair this is quite a different price-point. That said though, this is now the most likely compressor pedal to be seen on pro pedalboards and with good reason too. Featuring 6 full-frequency dials to help you set your compression for exactly how you need it, this is probably the undisputed current champion of compressors, and I was all set to get one too - until the Jackson Audio Bloom materialised from nowhere. I may still get this one anyway at some stage - for occasional swap-out, but for now - my sights are set on the ’Bloom’.

I love Adrian Thorpy’s pedals and this one is no exception - he always does things a little differently - and here gives you a very simple control topology but with killer sounds as always. As an avowed tweaker - usually the more dials the better for me, but I do see the advantage of simplicity too. I was initially going to do just a 3-way piece here and feature this alongside the ‘Bloom’ and the ‘Cali76’. These were my 3 favourites overall, but I feel all the pedals featured here have merits and some will suit some players better than others. The whole point of this blog really is to let you know what the best options are out there and what alternatives you have available to you.

Considering how much I love my Mini Ego - I could not leave out its original inspiration here - which has full dials for Tone and Attack - which are replaced by 2-way toggles on the mini. I still think Brian could have used mini dials on the mini for those functions, but I find the Mini Pedal is pretty perfect as it is. The original gives you that same crisp tone with just a little more control. I feel that Keely was - still is to a degree ’The Compressor King’ - but the Ego started stealing away customers, and now the Origin Effects Cali76 has been winning over many of the key pro players. It will be interesting to see the impact of the Jackson Audio Bloom - I guess it really depends on what you’re looking for, and what your price-point ceiling is.

This whole selection features boutique pedals really, and I was thinking I needed a more mainstream Compressor to list as an alternative here - something like the standard Dynacomp - in fact there is a new four-pot version of that recently released. Yet my preferred MXR compressor is actually the very boutique-priced Studio Compressor model. I thought I would therefore include the above comparison video for a little overview of why I prefer this model over the other MXR ones. It holds up well against all of the above listed ones, and completes my top 10 as such.

I keep forgetting to include this very reasonably priced 6-control compressor - with dials for Sustain, Output, Attack, Blend, Tone and Input. This is an often overlooked but really smart and dynamic compressor that deserves more coverage - so here it is!