The Ugly Truth About Joyo Pipebomb Compressor Pedal

If you've looked at any music gear website, or have been inside an actual music store within the last few years, you have probably noticed that pedals are getting smaller. Even the larger pedals that we see coming out are compact. Pedals like the Fuzz Face and Big Muff Pi are considered huge and bulky next to most of Boss' line, next to this new wave of ultra small effects, pedals like those are mammoth. Joyo has put out a line that is no longer than my thumb and not much wider. A pedal with a footprint that small is crazy. When looking for a compressor pedal for my already cramped board, I found these and thought that I'd give it a try. Comp isn't an effect that I use a lot, but is something I want on hand for when I do. I've had several compressors, but none of them have really filled that specific niche in my sound I'm looking for. The Visual Sound Rout 66 was a great OD slapped together with an OK comp. At least, the comp was just not what I was looking for. I've played the Boss CS-3 and found a vintage CS-2 that really didn't fit the bill. So I wanted something with a knob to blend wet and dry signal like some of the high dollar jobs, and I wanted it to have a small footprint to squeeze onto my board. So the Joyo fit the bill, as long as it did it's job in a manor of my liking. So here's what I found out:

Joyo has thought this through.

If you read about these pedals or watch videos on YouTube about pedals, then you might have seen that these pedals come in a nice box with some extra stuff. There is no rubber on the bottom of the pedal and the screws that hold the bottom plate on are countersunk so that the bottom is completely flat. In the box is a standard "anti-slip" 3M rubber mat and a precisely cut piece of Velcro. To me this means that Joyo totally gets that these pedal are meant to live on a board. If you lay all your pedals on the floor then you really don't need tiny pedals. The whole floor is your board! The knobs have a interesting cover to protect them from when your foot hits the switch. This is a nice touch considering the knobs are no larger around than a pencil. The stems on the pots must not be much larger than the lead of a pencil. I've seen regular pots get snapped off, so a wayward foot could probably do some damage.

The sounds are familiar.

To sum up this pedal you need two words: subtle and transparent. With the comp all the way up you notice the effect, but it's not really "in your face". In fact, that is one of my favorite positions. Although, I play with compression like it's an effect that is supposed to do something special instead of using it to "shape" my tone. For the most part, it is hard to tell when the pedal is on, but in a kind of good way. It doesn't color your sound or dampen your high-end. The pedal can be dialed in to let your clean signal in along side the compressed signal. This is a subtle pedal when its set to 100% wet signal. When you dial that back, it gets difficult to hear the effect at all. I know that I'm not an expert at compression pedals, but it seems like you should be able to tell when it is on.

It starts to get ugly.

So the pedal does what it says. Although, sometimes I find myself wanting to turn the knobs past their stopping points. That is until I start hearing the hiss that comes from this pedal. I put this pedal on my board for a set with the group I play with. I was excited to hear this pedal in the mix with a whole band. Everything was fine until someone said, "What's that hiss?". I was running through a Fender Blues Junior at stage levels. The hiss was more than a little annoying. I don't normally run into this problem so I don't have a noise gate on my board. That meant that the compressor had to either be dialed back, or turned off. The whole thing left me a little underwhelmed. I dialed the levels back and continued use until something developed a hum. It only stopped when I turned that Pipebomb off. That is the way it stayed until I had time to address the issue. The problem might have been something knocking the power jack around. It is located on the side of the pedal instead of the top of the pedal like most other pedals. Another black mark on the pedal is how it clips when in the signal path of a guitar with hot pickups. I played at many different levels and amps while trying to attribute the clipping to something else, but the only consistent thing was when running through a hot humbucker, this pedal acts like an OD. The sounds are not terrible. Actually it was a nice soft clip, but I couldn't get the signal to clean up. I turned the volume down, but it had to go way down to clean up. This was the biggest bummer of the entire review. I only got this effect when running a very hot humbucker. Other guitars did just fine. Strats with your average single coils really benefit from a little compression and had none of the clipping from my hotrodded Tele. This might be a common thing with compression in general, but it is a little underwhelming.

Is it worth it?

Joyo is an imported brand that has a reputation of copying other pedals and selling them at a value price. This doesn't seem to be the case with this pedal. Even if this is a copy of another compression pedal, the price isn't necessarily rock bottom. At nearly $70, its a sizable investment for a pedal with the reputation of being a budget brand. There are things that this pedal gets very right, and other things that miss the mark. Packaging and design are the selling points here, but the very subtle effect, odd placement of the power input, higher than average price tag, along with the downside of these ultra-compact pedal inherently have, the price might warrant looking elsewhere for a similar unit.