Not too long ago, I started to realize how important of a role a compressor plays for bassists.  I love what I do, and sometimes… I love it a little too much.  I pluck or hit my strings with more force than necessary and the sound is something less than pleasant.  So, in order to not blow any more speakers or send any more FOH sound engineers into a tizzy, I needed something that made my sound more consistent and prevented those annoying spikes in my signal.  Thus, I went on an endless search for a good, but affordable, compressor/limiter.

The Boss Limiter Enhancer did not come up on my initial search for a compressor; I’m pretty sure it popped up as a related search on a Musician’s Friend product.  The Boss Limiter is very basic – It has four knobs: Level, Enhance, Ratio, and Threshold.  The Enhance knob is there to add some of the Lows and Highs taken away by the compression.  However, the more you turn up the Enhance knob, the more noise you’ll hear through your amp.  I advise you to keep the Enhance option pretty low.  As for the Ratio, that works pretty standard and can be adjusted according to taste – set it low for a wider dynamic range, or higher for a more “squashed” dynamic level. The word “Limiter” just means that this pedal offers you more control over the threshold, the point in the volume at which the compression kicks in when the signal crosses over it.  Be careful not to set the threshold too low – you only want the highest peaks to be affected. Too low of a threshold can actually make your signal sound distorted.

Overall, this pedal works great.  It’s simple, easy to use, and is just like any Boss pedal; dependable, durable, and affordable.  I paid about $79 for mine, and I use it at every show I play. It was one of the best investments I made for my rig, and has noticeably improved my tone. I would highly recommend it to anyone looking to buy a dependable compressor/limter.