Keeley Compressor Pedal: Demo and Tutorial

A pricey piece of equipment that a lot of folks that swear by.

The Keeley 4 Knob Compressor really cleans up your tone while still letting the details through. It gives your playing a nice studio feel and the sustain knob alone allows you a lot of variation. At the price the question is how much better is it than something like the Xotic SP Compressor or the Wampler Ego? I'll leave that up to you.

 

Jason Houtsma is the co-founder and guitar teacher at Worship Artistry, where he is helping musicians of every level answer the call to worship with passion and confidence. Jason has been leading worship and writing music since he was 15 years old and currently serves as Worship Pastor for Mosaic Church in Bellingham, WA. He is husband to Alli and father to Bjorn and Asher.

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Comments

Great Compressor, Great Company

Submitted by michaelwolsey on June 8, 2015 - 4:49am.

Thanks for this review Jason. I wanted to add a couple of things from my experiences.

I bought the previous version of this Keeley Compressor and couldn't be happier with it! It's the two knob version and the Attack and Clipping controls are actually inside the pedal and can be adjusted there if one wanted to change that up from the factory settings. I have found the factory settings to be fine and have set Level and Sustain similar to what you have done in your demo. This is one of two pedals I have on my board that I leave on most of the time and it makes everything sound better, at least to my ear. The other is the JHS Prestige.

Here's the thing....the pedal stands on it's own and I would have been happy with it no matter what. However, trying to save a few bucks, I bought the pedal used (it's an '08 model with a custom Laura Bennett paint job), and was disappointed when after having it on my board for a couple of weeks, it suddenly went out on me. I contacted Keeley to arrange sending it in for repairs and was very pleasantly surprised when the Keeley service department contacted me back, asked me to send the pedal in, and then they fixed it at NO CHARGE! The only thing I had to pay for was the fees to ship the pedal to Keeley. Keeley actually gives a one year parts and labor warranty on all their pedals even it was bought used! Who else does that? Within a couple of weeks, the pedal was back on my board and working like new. Now that's integrity.

I also wanted to give a recommend for Rouge Guitar Shop. I recently bought a JHS modded Ernie Ball Volume pedal from them. Very shortly after I received the pedal, the volume pot in the pedal started freaking out. I contacted RGS about it and they were great. They sent me a shipping label and had me send the pedal back, no questions asked. It took a while before I got the new one because they were out of the JHS mods, but it wasn't too long and I was back in business. Great service there and I recommend them.