Ibanez BP5 Bass Compression

three knobs...level, attack and sustain. very easy to figure out and start using

I am giving it a ten because it cost so little and does a good job ie waht it's supposed to do which is tighten up and clarify your sound. so on the bang for your buck scale it gets a ten. i turn the attack to about 12 oclock and the sustain to about 10 oclock and it makes my bass technique seem less sloppy...a lot more punchy and percussive. it only gets noisy when the sustain is cranked and i don't crank it anyways so it's not an issue.

hasn't broken yet. it is plastic but if i recall rightly and i think i do, this is the same material they use on M-16 machine guns and those are known to hold up

it's used and well beyond warranty if it ever had one and it works so i haven't had to call them.

it gets the job done and for only $20

NOTE: This is an update to my previous review. I was playing a fretless bass, and now have a fretted bass. See below...

As stated in my earlier review, this pedal is HORRIBLE with a fretless bass, because it distorts the low E string when trying to bring it level with the other strings. I just bought a late-`80s Charvel 3B (fretted) active bass, and the Ibanez pedal works just fine with this instrument. String response is even throughout, and this pedal in conjunction with the active electronics in the bass give me a huge sound without any unwanted distortion. There is almost no noise, although noise will probably increase as the battery wears down.

A vast difference from when playing a fretless with this unit. Makes me wonder if other compressors would yield the same results.

I still don't think this pedal is perfect -- I think fretless players have more use for a compressor than others, and it won't help them. But with a fretted bass, it works just fine. There are surely better bass compressors, but for the obscenely low price, who's complaining?

Controls consist of three knobs: Level, Attack and Sustain. If you don't know what a compressor does, the manual is absolutely no help. If you have used one before, you won't bother looking. Ibanez does have the decency to include a 9V battery, or you can use an optional power supply. It has everything you would expect out of a compressor pedal (10), but the manual is a joke (5). I'll give it an 8 because some experimentation with three knobs will get you farther than the manual.

As compressors go, either they do the job or they don't. In terms of evening out string response, it does a fine job. Unlike the previous review, I didn't notice any excessive noise, but this is also the only pedal I was running through. (I sometimes use BOSS SD-1 and DD-2 pedals, but wasn't at the time.)

Where I run into a problem is using this with a fretless bass. Running a Samick 4-string fretless into an old Randall RB-60 combo, I get some monster low end with that fretless "mwah" hum. That low E string does tend to get a bit overwhelming, and it's as if the BP5 doesn't know how to handle it. The result is that the E string sounds like it's clipping, distorting it to the point that it's rendered useless. This is especially obvious when playing with a pick, although I didn't have much better results using just my fingers. The actual level is lowered to about the same as the other strings, which is good, but the sound is totally ruined in the process. I just had this bass professionally set up with the action just the way I like it, so I'm not going to undo it by changing everything to compensate for this pedal.

Might work fine for a fretted bass, but that's for someone else. This will go into storage until I get a standard bass...if ever.

One knob already feels pretty loose, and the plastic shell doesn't inspire me with a lot of trust. However, it is a compressor, not something that you're likely to be stomping on and off throughout a gig. Under normal conditions, I'm sure it would hold up fine, and I've lived without a compressor up to now, so no need for a backup.

It's a discontinued model, so I don't care.

I played bass in several bands over the past ten years, playing just about every style of hard rock and heavy metal. I've started concentrating on lead guitar in the past couple years, and play both instruments at the moment. I especially like the fretless playing of Steve DiGiorgio (Death, Testament, etc.), and want to incorporate that sound into my own songs.

With most of my focus and money going into my guitar playing, I've kept my bass rig stripped down to just the one fretless bass, mid-sized combo amp and a couple of pedals. Although I'm sure a compressor would be a good addition, this unit just won't cut it for me.

As I stated earlier, this product would probably perform fine for most people, but NOT if you play fretless bass. I'll just have to get by without for the time being, and save up for something better.

It's easy to use. Three knobs: Level, Attack, and Sustain.

Sound quality is where it hurts. Although it's great at mellowing and leveling out your strings, at the higher settings (mainly sustain), the background noise is too overwhelming.

Bulletproof

Haven't tried (yet)

Overall, I've been impressed by what it is capable of doing, but really uneasy about the resultant noise produced. I'd like to try a new one to see if the noise problem still exists.