Alesis NanoCompressor

Fairly easy to use with straight ahead controls for a compressor. Compression can be a tricky thing for some, but this is a pretty easy unit to use.

I used it for bass and it worked great. Ibanez SRX --> Boss Tuner --> Markbass F1 w/Ampeg 6x10 with the compressor in the effects loop.

I have read that some people who wanted it maxxed out on compression get a lot of noise, and that will happen if you over compress anything. In my opinion, bass just needs a little compression to mellow spikes and even it out and this unit does a great job of it. Some say it "colors" your sound, not at all. I used to own the Keeley compressor, and it works every bit as well with more control. I do have one beef with my unit, it has developed a hum to it all the time over the last bit. Not a hiss or noise, just hum. I wonder if somehow the grounding got whacky over the years and something popped loose. Will put a "10" since it sounded perfect til then and this unit has seen a lot of use and abuse.

Still works just fine, just has that hum. It is built tough and could withstand a war.

Never used anyones customer support before.

Great unit for anyone in my opinion. I see them selling cheap when they pop up and dollar for dollar you cannot get a better compressor.

My guitarist son gave me my (now vintage!)Nanocompressor, and I'm using it to break into the voice-over biz, with a Rode NT1A condenser mic and an onboard pc soundcard. Agreed, none of this is high end, but my sound is on a par with FM radio, and a great deal cleaner than MP3 reductions or DAB broadcasting.
I query the attack time on the Alesis - it says max 0.1 millisec, and this is improbable, way beyond most pro gear. In fact mine measures at 10 millisec, and I would prefer it to be 5 or faster!
If you are handy with electronics, you could build for this little Alesis a thing all the great compressors now have: a release chain. This ensures your gain only recovers after a loud sound if a quiet sound comes next. If there's just silence, the gain should hang, until the next sound, to avoid emphasising noise. To do this, I used a basic chip, patched into the audio input, to drive a Vactrol (LED/photoresistor combo) and wired the photoresistor part across the release pot, which I leave at slow. I also fed a small negative supply, about a volt, to that point through a very high resistor to cause the control bias to drift to mid-level, until sound is detected. This turns a very good compressor into a nearly excellent one: less noise, reduced slap, click and breathing.

Using this veteran unit for voiceover, and for some whole mix. Very effective, versatile (anywhere from children's story to a hard advert), no excessive artifacts and great in its price range. Lends itself to experimentation as indicated.

Confident in this unit. Soundly built. Has been dropped high enough to bend a spindle, and it has survived opening for a modification.

I emailed Alesis April 1009 to ask about the unlikely published attack speed of 0.1 millisec. Friendly reply, agreed with my opinion, and said the firm is in different ownership now.

Used primarily for voice. Haven't done an A/B but I often hear broadcast compressed sound that's much rougher on the ear than this Alesis.

Takes some reading to dial in some decent sounds. Manual was great for understanding how to use the device and to inform you on where to start. Once you get the hang of it, you can use this for a multitude of purposes and sounds.

Setup = 84 American Strat equipped w Noiseless pickups, 91 Charvel w Dimarzio Area 58 and 61 pickups, or 73 Ibanez Les Paul copy equipped with Seymour Duncans. All w gauge 10s. Crate Palomino v32 212. Connect by itself with monster cables and thru my Carl Martin Combinator 2 with George L cables. Also tested with Vox Pathfinder model v9158, Fender FM 100 head, Marshall MG 250 DFX.

Sound = This baby was added to my pedalboard believe it or not. I play in a large variety band with a horn section, keys, ... It helped me even out my sound, tighten up my rhythm work, and cut through the mix. I have DOD, Aphex, Ibanez, and RMC Teese compressors and I decided between the RMC and Alesis. I still rely mostly on the Alesis for 90% of my sounds.

I can get great tight funk and blues rhythm sounds out of it. I can use it for metal and rock. I use it with an EQ, delay, and sometimes chorus.

yes you can depend on this device. you can use it with no backups.

never had to use it

Soul, funk, r&b, blues, rock, latin, latin rock, tejano, jazz,??? This compression has really worked for me.

been playing 25 plus years

I own Boss, Ibanez, Morley, RMC Teese, DOD. Alesis, Digitech, MXR, Aphex, and Analogman modded pedals.

I would definitely replace it with the same one. Depend it too much to not replace it.

I wish that they would make a pedal version of this where you could switch the hard / soft and peak / rms. OR better yet - make a two channel / two setting model.

Best purchase I ever made.

The only complaint about the ease of use is that Alesis only put the lowest and highest setting on the dials. For instance, "attack" is listed at something like .1ms at the bottom of the dial, then there are a bunch of non-labled markings, and finally 200ms is listed at the highest setting. But it's not hard to tweak around the knobs and get a decent setting.

not very noisy. i usually use this box when tracking, recording vocals, bass, drums, acoustic, etc. I find the sound quality to be good, and i've compared it against another compressor of similar price (behringer composer) and the sound was nice and full. For this price, this is a good sounding compressor, although at some settings you can hear it pumping.

very well built for small box (1/3 rack space). Hell, i dropped it down the stairs accidentally the first day i got it and it works fine!

never had to deal with them.

a good cheap compressor. fine for home recording and for using in a guitar or bass singal path.

Very easy to use. Everyone should have at least one. Seriously. I use one inbetween my keyboard and amp, another comp between my bass and it's amp, and a separate comp for my vocals and guitar. This is the best compressor I've used. It isn't as easy to set as some of the generic stomp boxes with one adjustable setting, but that's okay. This unit has the right balance between versatility and ease-of-use. You will need to likely spend a half-hour getting to understand compression basics if you've never used a good comp before.

I use it with all kinds of instruments, but mainly my keyboard. It's very quiet. You can tweak it so many ways that the sound quality largely depends on your ability to properly use the equipment.

I've never had a problem with mine and I feel I can depend on it with no problems.

I've actually had good luck with Alesis. I think a lot of musicians are hot-heads and they get all bent out of shape when they don't get immediate drop-everything-and-help-me kind of service. If you are willing to wait about 24-hours for a phone call or e-mail response, Alesis will help you out.

I love these units. The ONLY compaint I have is the shape. It's not a rack-mount unit, and it doesn't exactly fit onto my desktop really easy. I have it resting on my amp and that's okay, but I wish the unit had a more convenient shape. Minor bug.

Being a compact product, Alesis omitted the numbers between full CW and CCW. I'm experienced with compressors to know the effects of attack and release time, and it took some experimentation to figure out the scale of the legends. Once that was accomplished then it worked as expected.

I like it for stereo program material. In fact I use it between my DVD player and my stereo, because DVD MOVIES ARE TOO DAMN DYNAMIC!! If you hate having to turn up the TV to hear spoken dialogue and then get blown off your chair when the next explosion scene blasts you at +30dB, then get one of these boxes it will make movie watching MUCH more enjoyable.

The acid test of compressors is steady state program material with latin percussion mixed in. I played with some live material with it and got good results.

The frequency range certainly seems adequate, I get plenty of low end subsonics and the high end is crystal clear.

This is a set-and-forget module, the buttons are rather small and the knobs are squeezed together tighter than a can of sardines. It was ideal for the DVD player and it was cheap. Good compressor for stereo program material, but don't try using independent instruments through a stereo compressor because the VCA limiters are internally linked and won't work as independent compressors.

This is the most basic of all compressors.Not hard to figure out.

For the price this is the best compressor to use.It adds punch to bass,drums,guitars without any noise.I play alot of heavy music.I use this thing with a Marshall dsl tubeamp and it adds tons of punch to my sound.With alot of distortion it has that Slipknot,Hatebreed type guitar tone.I love it.

Ive used it at gigs for over two yrs.Its never stopped working.

Ive never dealt with them.But like most companies now days they probably have terrible customer skills.

Ive been playing music like Slayer,Metallica,Morbid Angel for about ten years.I just added this to my gear and it makes my guitar sound so much better.Takes the mud out of my lowend and it evens out the highs so my ears dont bleed.lol

I found this unit pretty straight forward while using the manual with it. I am not a real technical person and havent owned very many stand-alone compressors but I got this to do what I needed it to do in a matter of minutes.

I only used this for smoothing out vocals and bass guitar while laying tracks in my basement and personally thought for the money it was quite efficient but havent tried it in any other applications.

I didnt have it very long because I went to all computer based gear (although this would still work fine for a setup as such) so I can not comment on that.

Never needed to call support.

I think this little thing is well worth the money (approx. $59 to date Jan 2003)but then again if you are needing more out of a compressor of course you pretty much get what you pay for. Very nice simple unit with good quality for a good low price but may not work well in all applications (for instance-Guitar rig)

I didn't get a manual for this thing because I bought it used. I looked up some general information on the principles of compression though, and that was enough to use this compressor effectively. The dials and buttons are clearly marked in widely-accepted terms; ratio, threshhold, knee setting, RMS or Peak(you can look that up online if you have to like I did), attack and release. Everything you need, nothing you don't.

I'm using this compressor on my bass rig, a 500W GK head with a GK 4x10 It's the only effect I use. After playing a few gigs I don't know how I got by without this thing. Slap bassists will be very satisfied with this product; you can tweak the settings so your thumbwork cuts through and the pops don't overbear. You do need to be careful not to use extreme settings, otherwise you get some hissing and pumping/breathing, otherwise it sounds great. And I haven't even used the stereo feature yet.

Seems pretty solid so far. I've had it for about four months now. I've dropped it a few times, it's kind of hard not to drag it off the amp since it's so small, but it still works great. I can live without compression so yes, I would use it without a backup at a show. I'd be surprised to have it die on me anyway.

Bought it used, so I don't suppose I'll get much help here.

I've been playing bass for six years now, and I love to keep it funky. This compressor is a boon to me. I love the tight, percussive sound I can get out of it, nad the versatility and ease of use is great. If this thing got stolen or brokern I would replace it the next day. It also looks like it would be good for recordings and whole-band compression since it's stereo, but I don't want to sacrifice it to find out. Definitely a great value.

Five knobs, four buttons, lots of LED's. About as simple as compressors get.
Compression is very subjective and not at all intuitive to use, but the manual and quick setup card are quite good.
Putting it into RMS mode disables the attack and release pots, so all you have to do is sort out ratio and level.

Driving this unit with a high level signal is not a good idea, unless you really like to see red LED's, but it seems to work ok in my bass amp fx loop.
Used it a couple of times for home recording, with OK results, generally it gets used on the main outs on our desk, to limit the transients going into the amp (and the speakers)
I lent it to a DJ friend of mine who used it for talkover ducking, h liked it so much he bought one himself.

Fairly reliable. Before I bought this unit the band didn't have a compressor, and it wouldn't be a big deal to go back to not having one.

All round, a useful little unit, especially considering the price. Anyone running large PA should get one of these, as there's no cheaper way of protecting your amps, speakers and ears.