MXR M87 Bass Compressor Reviews

Best compressor for bass pedalboard. A must have for every bassist. Note: attack and release knobs are inverted!

exceptional in every way

Big fan of mxr so I didn't really have to think twice before biting the bullet on this baby. And boy....was she worth it and more! Great both for live, and studio use! I use it primarily for slapping or when i'm playing close to the bridge and desire a little more pop in the sound! Works great alongside other effects like reverb and distortion also! Keeps things tight and mud free! A very diverse pedal that can be utilised for an array of situations! Would Highly Recommend!

Great product

Does what it is supposed to do! Easy to use, the addition of the leds really help understand how much compression is being applied while you play.

It's pretty transparent which is what I wanted, so if you are looking for the pedal to "change" your sound it might not be the Compressor for you.

Overall great pedal!

Very good quality to price ratio

I'm very satisfied with the pedal. It's perfect for bass players that tend to alternate between aggressive and quiet riffs. The blue led tends to be a bit bright and can be blinding in darker environments. You can easily cover it with black tape and still be able to tell wether it's on or off. You'll most likely leave it on most of the time anyway.

Top compressor

After adding the M87 to my rig, the tone of my bass has improved considerably. Taking into account that my fingerstyle is very aggressive, a bass compressor is more than a must. Absolutely recommended!

Makes BASS sound great!

Life after MXR M87 is way better! Now I do feel my BASS sound great!

Even if there is a bunch of knobs, it is pretty straightforward to try them and find a good configuration.

The only "issue" would be the medium to high price. But I still think it is a good value for money.

must have in pedal board

I use it everywhere - live and in the studio.

Great for slap

I could not imagine playing slap bass without this great pedal. It is not cheap, but worth the price. Initially it might be hard to set up the knobs for your needs, but just read the manuals, experiment and you reach the goal! Highly recommended!

Excellent pedal!

This is a great pedal, excellent build quality. A lot of controls may make it slightly difficult for beginners but the gain reduction meter also aids in learning how the compressor works.

Great pedal but mine had minor problems

Great sounding pedal with lots of features, really easy to sculpt a nice sound, however mine had a crackling problem that required some basic repairs but nothing too drastic from how highly this pedal is rated though I would say mine was a one off

Very transparent

It's based on the 1176 Urei Compressor and it does the job perfectly! Transparent and punchy.

Fantastic piece of equipment

Worth every penny. After using it for a couple of months on stage and in rehearsal rooms, I feel like using it everywhere except home. 5 knobs give everything about sound compression that you might need. Worth mentioning - Billy Sheehan uses 2 of these in his pedalboard.

Very durable metal jacket, nice LED lighting showing how exactly your dynamics are corrected by the M87 - that helps a lot during the setup and helps to understand your sound.

Even if you feel like you don't need it after give it a try - it'll be very easy to sell but I honestly think you won't need that.

Solid, versatile and great sounding.

A really well constructed and great sounding pedal. I'm not going to say that the compression is smooth and transparent, but rather that it has the ABILITY to be smooth and transparent, which incidentally is how I have my own set. If you want extreme compression that you can really hear biting down on a signal, you can easily dial that in.

The biggest revelation for me has been in the studio. The pedal takes cues from the Urei 1176. Whilst in the studio recently, I tracked my vocalist through this pedal to and it did an incredible job: comparing very favourably with my Purple Audio MC77 (an 1176 clone that I have in the studio).

A useful tool

A very useful tool to have in your armoury, especially at small gigs where the engineer doesn't have the ability to add compression to your bass from front of house.

Can offer some interesting tones and is great for driving you amp if you have a tube bass head.

fantastic product

I did a great deal of research before slashing out for quite an expensive compressor. All the reviews raved about this pedal, and I have to agree with them all. Can't fault this pedal in anyway hence 5stars!!

My first thought when out of the box was 'it's a bit small' but this turns out to be an asset as personally this will be set once and then left on all the time, so it's not taking up too much room on the pedal board. I gigged for the first time with it last night.....man, where did all that sustain come from. It made my bass sing.

The other great feature is the LED level indicator. Compressors can be hard to set up but this let's you easily see if you are hitting the limit and being compressed.

Also, unlike most compressors in has input.and output level controls, so you can really dial in the right levels

I just can't fault this pedal.

I'm wondering how I ever played with out it. I thoroughly recommend it

Not bad, but not the best

This is a compressor in compact pedal format offering a lot of the control you would expect from a studio compressor, in other words attack, release, ratio (presets) plus input level / threshold and output level controls. All the controls do what they are meant to do and it certainly compresses as expected, however it just isn't transparent and changes your sound and not for the better. You do get a punchier fatter sound, depending on how you set it up of course, but it changes your tone and you lose the character of your instrument. Maybe that's ok for some and depending on your rig maybe you won't notice, but for me it changed things too much so I didn't keep it.

Perfect for bass and guitar

I use this pedal for bass, acoustic guitar and electric guitar. Since it's so versatile and has so many different settings it's perfect for each and every of those instruments!

I strongly recommend this for everyone who plays bass or guitar!

It can also be used as a clean and loud boost. Perfect if you want to push the per-amp of your amp for more distortion or if you have weak pickups.

Love it!

Full marks for the M87

So this one takes a little getting used to, actually had to read the info booklet (I say booklet, more a small leaflet) on what the knobs do. After I'd done that, this little pedal is a really useful piece of kit. Saves lots of time adjusting compressors on amplifiers and is invaluable when using a borrowed rig. I use it mostly to keep my slap from busting cabs and it does just that, by compressing the signal with absolutely no loss of tone. Full marks for the M87 :)

Difficult at first, then helped me sound better.

My finger play is a bit uneven especially when playing for long. Wanted something to make it sound smoother and more even output. Easier than changing playing style. Was at first not really satisfied of the sound character. Almost gave up but then actually read the manual and started turning all of those knobs lika a maniac till i found "my sound". now i really like it. lots of knobs to turn actually help in this case. lots of possibilities with adjusting attack etc etc. I like the design and how it looks. the meter lights up quite pretty when hitting the strings hard. Had it for more than a year now and several gigs and it still looks good and runs without any problems so far. i would say it is difficult to make it sound as you want but when you succeed it's brilliant.

MXR M87

MXR M87 IS A VERY GOOD PEDAL FOR THE MONEY...THANK YOU