Mooer Yellow Comp

The Yellow Comp is a great little mini pedal which rounds up the output signal nicely, eliminating undesirable frequencies and keeping the good ones, with some versatility of use, at a very friendly, budget price!.. and doing all that rather quietly, which is an important issue that kept me from opting for a slightly more expensive, dynamic compressor, such as the famous MXR Dynacomp, or the BOSS CS-3, as dynamic compressors are supposed to be more noisy, but yet might be more authentic in sound?

Let me warn you though, about this review, that pedals are NOT my specialty, I am mostly a plug and play guitarist, trying to use effects "minimally", save for a Wah-wah pedal, a little chorus at times, a rare delay, and some reverb.. But... I am indeed a specialist of TONE, and timber, and hearing and achieving "the" holy tone, which can be different, on different moments, at different times, for different people, but mostly it (for me) resembles the sweet music coming from a top notch old lamp radio (transmitting probably a super nice guitar tone through a vintage Fender Amp?)

And, yes, I did achieve some real sweet tones through the Yellow Comp, placed in between a Blues Junior Limited Edition and a Gibson SG. The VOLUME and EQ knobs on the Yellow Comp are great to have to be able to "keep your own tone". I normally have my Blues Junior dialed in on my usual set up, and with the Yelllow Comp's volume button (which controls the gain coming out of the compressor really), and the EQ dial, this compressor allows me to keep the output tone close to my normal tone while making the general sound nicer through compression.

So in this way, it is a great little "cleaner", just by itself, for clean tones, between an amp and a guitar. However, with the gain turned up on the compressor (through the volume dial), and equalized to your liking with the EQ, it becomes a compressor, plus a sort of an overdrive/distortion, or a booster, added on! It sounded especially magnificent with the amp dialed to make some real tube gain, plus the additional gain from the Yellow Comp with its volume dial set high.

With this sort of "overdrive" setting, plus an octave pedal, and a Crybaby, before the compressor, we were able to reach some incredibly far out dirty tones going on Hendrix-ian territories from the Blues Junior.

Coming back to clean settings, with the octave and Wahwah pedals still before the compressor, Yellow Comp cleaned up beautifully, making the tone round, and bright, and managed to keep all the potentially disturbing "high-pitch-grit-dirt", whatever you wanna call it, arising from the Wahwah, and the Octave pedal, OUT OF THE MIX!

Overall, Yellow Comp does the job, and it does it quietly, so I reckon that it is a good return on just a few bucks invested, and that, even for a tone freak like myself! It probably will not give that David Gilmore sustain per se, but there are Dyna Comps for that.. This compressor, on the other hand, cleans up nicely, by itself, or after other effects as well. It sure will remain a part of my set up, at the very end of the chain, just before the amp, until further developments!

I use the Mooer Yellow Comp usually before my drives but as i'm using the Boss ES-8 looper i can put it anywhere i want it in the signal chain. I play mostly alternative rock and this comp makes the deal for me.

It's tiny, really well built and thank god there's a white indicator in the two small knobs so I can see properly what's the setting i'm on.
The knobs feel nice and the footswitch looks like it will last for ages.

When engaged it provides a clear compression, not too squishy, not too subtle. Enough to bring up those dynamics. I use it primarly with a clean sound and my notes become imediately more "roundy" and less sharp. With drives, i use the comp after the drive, so i can increase a bit of the already compressed signal and give a volume boost. Works better with a clean signal but it works well with distortion as well. Really clear tones.

Price: Totally worth it. There are plenty of more expensive pedals that simply don't provide the sound transparency that the Mooer Yellow Comp provides.

The first thing I noticed after removing the Mooer Yellow Comp from it's equally tiny box was the size. This pedal is much smaller than say a Tc Electronics mini series pedal or similar Xotic. It truly is tiny. Which was a major plus point for me as I had to fix it onto an already cramped pedalboard. Build quality feels good however you can tell that money has been saved on the paint finish. This makes little difference to a working musician as myself and I welcome the exceptionally low price point for an otherwise excellent pedal. As an optical compressor the Mooer doesn't attempt to cover the traditional "Ross" sounds found in other traditional stomp box guitar pedals but has a different feel and sound more akin to a studio compressor. It has a very low noise floor and the ability to adjust eq after compression is a fantastic bonus making this a very flexible little pedal. At the price point this pedal is a no-brainer and if you are either looking for an optical compressor that has space constraints at the front of it's mind or a compressor that stays clear if the clichéd Ross sound then you owe it to yourself to give this a try.