Tosin Abasi's Abasi Concepts has unveiled the Micro-Aggressor, a compressor pedal that has been engineered to tame transients and enhance clarity in your electric guitar tone – particularly when playing downtuned metal guitar riffs.
This has been in the works for some time. In 2022, Abasi posted a video to Instagram demoing the then unnamed compressor. “Extremely excited to show you guys a new pedal we’ve developed at ABASI!” he wrote. “Something to make the notes feel like they’re popping, as opposed being stamped down. It’s basically the ideal compressor for the fast percussive techniques I love to use and it does it with and amp-like feel and character.”
And this is very much what the final product is designed to do. Some compressors have an imperceptible effect on your electric guitar tone – they make it better but you don’t necessarily notice it until you turn them off.
The Micro-Agressor, however, well, it’s going to be more noticeable. “Unlike sterile, transparent compressors, the Micro-Aggressor infuses your sound with rich character and a satisfying feel,” says the blurb from Abasi Concepts.
And sometimes that is just what you need, a pedal to spice up the relationship between your guitar and amp. Under the hood, the Micro-Aggressor actually deploys some amp-like technology, with a premium transformer in place to provide a similar feel and “dynamic, organic response” as a tube amp.
The Micro-Aggressor deals in studio-style parallel compression and you’ll find dual-compression circuits that have been tailored specifically with extended-range guitars in mind, not only doing the essential work of taming transients and smoothing things out a little but also promising a degree of clarity even when playing high-gain chords in those lower registers .
That makes perfect sense. Abasi, and Abasi Concepts, have done as much as anybody in popularising the seven-string guitar – or the eight – in recent years.
It is a very tidy piece of kit, with four knobs controlling your sound. Level adjusts the amount of boost in the primary compression circuit. Clarity is a tilt-style equalizer, the further you clockwise you turn it the more top-end clarity you’ll find.
Turn it counterclockwise from noon and your tone will thicken up and get warmer – which sounds like it could be a flattering counterpoint to the bite of a Telecaster’s bridge pickup, or any single-coil that could do with more meat on its bones.
Bloom adjusts the amount of compression applied by the primary compression circuit while Smack does likewise for the secondary compression circuit, allowing you to tailor your low-end clarity accordingly.
Other features of note include the “soft-touch” footswitch, the top-mounted jacks – which may or may not make this easier to mount on your pedalboard – and the pedal has true-bypass switching and ships with a limited five-year warranty.
At $249, it’s not cheap but then a good compressor is the sort of thing that never leaves your ‘board, and for all you eight-string maniacs muscling in on the bass guitar’s frequencies this might be just what you need to maintain order. The Micro-Aggressor ships from 18 November. See Abasi Concepts for more details.
