This is my first compressor pedal and I've found it's quite a valuable tool on my pedal board. It really tightens up the signal when i play with distortion and lets me ring out notes evenly and smoothly. I like it most when I'm playing clean. I have a nasty picking habbit - I have a problem consistantly picking with the same force so the volume jumps up and down alot. It's especially noticeable when playing clean. The compressor evens out my input signal so if I accidentally pick a note harder than the rest it still comes out of the amp sounding smooth and consistant. And like all Digitech pedals it has a rugged casing and sensitive knobs that you can tweak for hours getting different sounds. Great buy!

I loved my when I had it, but my only complaint was that the small piece of rubber that links up with the trigger broke off after only ten weeks or so of use. I'm going to have to purchase a new one.

I have had this pedal for a few years now. The sample settings in the booklet are a little excessive for my taste. I think a lot of people may be turned off by the heavy compression sounds that this thing is capable of, but it is possible to turn the parameters down. The wide range of the parameters, along with the ability to moderate them, makes this a great pedal to have for many different reasons. For good compression of picking dynamics, I just resort to more subtle versions of the ones listed in the DigiTech booklet. For more freaky sounds, I crank up the "sustain" and run it after a metal-type of distortion. It makes each held-out note gradually fade into static. Sometimes, I use this pedal as a booster, so I get a clean volume jump to push my tube amp, and on top I can add bits of volume dynamics.

I'm a 70's rocker playing country now. You know the guy in the sneakers with the Les Paul who stays out of the way for two sets then rocks out for the last two. I almost took this pedal back 'cause its not much with just guitar alone and it spit out a new Duracell coppertop in three days of casual use...gotta use a 9v adapter with this one. Anyway, I'm plugged into a Roland Cube 60, with one 12" extension speaker, and I need something to help with the clean sound, to control dynamics and add sustain. The MainSqueeze helped me find my place in the mix and gave me the sustain I was looking for. Especially helpful for the clean sound I need during the first two sets but I left it on all night. I use the "Classic Stack" setting on the Roland for distortion. I tweaked the settings on the MainSqueeze as I went. I didn't have any noise issues. It seems to have a kind of noise gate built in. Dead silent just sitting there, then you brush the strings and you hear some noise and hiss. Wasn't an issue with me but I don't play that loud or use extreme distortion.

To me this pedal worked fine. I gave a seven for quality because it gave a lot a feedback when I used it with distortion. Then I got a noise suppressor and used it with the distortion and it worked perfectly. This pedal rocks but I suggest getting a nooise suppressor with it.