I got one at a great price from a nice chap recently. Its a good compressor overall. My only advice if youre getting one, is to find one used.
Firstly, I'm a bass player, and i use only active basses currently.
The Punch Factory has an active pad switch. I dunno how many dB but it seems to take off alot of gain when i switch it to active. Because I dont own a passive pickup-ed instrument, I can't really gauge if its a good pad or too much.
It has an XLR output, which basically allows direct input into a mixing console. Useful for bass players and acoustic players in general. I don't know if electric guitarists can find it useful, but I'm just one person with limited knowledge. There's another switch which allows users to select between 'dry' (guitar only) or 'wet' (guitar signal with punch factory effected). At least i think thats the case... will update if its incorrect.
It has 2 simple controls: Level (output) and Drive (overall compession effect). The beauty of such simplicity is that you just need to worry about unity gain, as in balancing your effected level against your bypass level, after deciding how much 'Drive' you want in from the Punch Factory. Just play around with the Drive control, play your guitar, feel good, and adjust the Level control, and you're good to go.
What i really like about the pedal: the Drive control ranges from 1 to 10. For my active basses, it seems that around 1-5 feels more like a limiter effect, whereas 6-10 is leaning towards 'squashy' compression. Tone coloration comes for me after 8. Anything before that is transparent, and yet useful compression settings. Even with the tone colored, it still sounds useable.Overall, the pedal does take off a hint of treble (especially at extreme compression), but nothing to defeat the purpose of buying it, IMO.
Dislikes: Jack inputs are at the top of the pedal and too close to the buttons. But i'm just picky. There's nothing else to fault really. Hope u find this useful.
thanks!!
