Tone Press

At present I'm using through a Tech 21 Trademark 10 and it sounds great! I'll try it through the Tech 21 Trademark 60 later but I assume it will do as well there too. I've tried a Nashville Tele with a Seymour Duncan in the bridge, a Regal Dobro with a rigged Lawrence pickup and a early model Multi-Kord. There's very little noise except the volume boost makes the single coil's hum more noticeable. In the out of phase positions there is none. The volume boost has replaced the preamp I was using on the old Multi-Kord's weak pickup. Tech 21 amps claim "tube emulation" and with the Tone Press you'll get real close to it.    

I've only had it for 2 days so I don't know how reliable it is but it's built like a tank.

The manual is one page on line at Barber and that's all that you'll need. There are so many sounds that I can get out of this unit that the only problem is choosing which one.

I play everything from Country to Blues to Jazz. I don't want any distortion to muddy up extended chords and the Tone Press doesn't do that. I have never had any interest in playing Rock or Metal so I can't give an opinion there. I've been playing for 46 years and this is the only effect I would use except a volume pedal for the steel guitar and an analog delay.  If it were lost or stolen I would get another one. I like the ease of use and transparency of it but would like the trim pot to be more accessible. I have an early 1970's PAIA compressor that was useless beyond the lowest setting and I rarely used it. I tried mixing the compressed signal with a clean signal and that didn't help either. Barber has solved that problem with the Tone Press. If you play Blues it will give you more of a T-Bone Walker, Gatemouth Brown, John Mayer tone than a distorted Clapton one. I wouldn't call the Tone Press an effect. It enhances the signal and corrects what is lost between the guitar and the speaker. I will try it with other guitars and amps and post another update.

Tremendous. I use this pedal with a strat and mostly on clean and legato or clean and crisp tracks. The first sample setting in the manual called "Magic Dust for Single Coils" is where this pedal stays every time it is on. It brinds out the best in my strat's Lindy Fralin's. I ran this against my buddy's Keeley 4 knob compressor. I liked the Tone press for all the lighter compression and the Keeley for really compressed country stuff. Since that is not what I play, the Barber was the better fit for me. Plus it is $100 cheaper than the Keeley, and if I wanted it to do country spank it can do that really well - just not as well as the Keeley.

Great do far after 2 years of use.

Crazy easy to use. Comes with a manual with sample settings that are helpful as well. Only reason it is not a 10 is because you might spend a little time getting use to the fact that adding sustain requires bumping the vulume a bit to keep the sound level in the same place. But it is very intuitive.

Never had any interaction with the good folks at Barber Electronics. But I have heard they are quite friendly and helpful.

I think this is essential for adding that extra mojo to single coils, when you want clean and crisp sounds for alternative/indie music or whether you want your notes to have more sustain when you play some melodic cleans. I would buy this again if it was lost or stolen.

I usually don't like compression pedals because of the tone sucking and plastic pick attack sound, both of which I found in the Boss and Maxon comp pedals.  Sometimes, I'll hear a guitar sample where there is a ton of compression and it sounds really bad to me.  However, I needed compression because I play through a high wattage solid state (Fender Jazz King) amp and wanted to smooth out my clean work for pop and covers, etc. and give the amp a slightly more tubey feel.  The amp sounds great w/o compression for traditional jazz, but when playing funk and rock, it can get a bit spikey like most SS amps at louder volumes.  I use a Les Paul and the usual OD and distortion pedals.  I'm very pleased with this pedal.  It warms up the sound and controls the dynamics in a subtle way.  The attack is preserved and tone is smoothed out,  not cancelled.  There is a color pot on the inside that lets you roll it back for more vintage tone.  I tried this but it robbed a little of the upper mids and trebles, so I put it back to the default - all the way to the right for a more open, snappy sound.  I leave the controls at 12:00 with the volume at 1:00p.  It also really improved the control over my distortion - much more even string volume and better touch response and sustain.  There ia a bit of noise if you crank the knobs too high, but I think this is inherent in compressors since they are preamps with gain.  Same with the volume pump - slightly noticeably, but very even to maintain volume.  In summary - the best compressor I've heard though I've only owned the two I mentioned previously.  Highly recommended if you've been turned off to compression like I was.

Very easy to get a good sound (read below).