Chandler Limited Little Devil
Review by Eli Crews
Electronic Musician August 2010
Of the six compressors I tested, the Little Devil has the most interesting feature set.
Wade Goeke at Chandler Limited is a master of innovation, and the FET-based Little Devil is a culmination of a number of his past products, most notably the Germanium Compressor (see my review in the April 2008 EM). As on the Germ Comp, Goeke has left specific value numbers off, opting for a simple 1 to 6 scale for each of the controls rather than decibel or millisecond values to make the process of setting the controls more intuitive and less analytical. Continuous controls include Input, Output, Attack, and Mix, the latter of which lets users enable the Little Devil as a parallel compressor without having to split the signal to two channels.
Like that of the Purple Audio Action, the Little Devil’s attack range is wide, allowing for a large amount of influence over the tone and contour of the compressed sound with this single control. There are three-position switches for determining both the ratio (Hi/Med/Lo) and the release (Fast/Med/Slow), and a six-position switch for choosing the sidechain highpass filter (HPF) frequency (Out/30Hz/60Hz/90Hz/ 150Hz/300Hz). Three of the other compressors in this roundup have sidechain HPFs, but the Little Devil is the only one offering variable frequency selections, which are handy for sculpting the sound of a kick drum or bass, or for preventing the low-end energy from triggering compression on a submix or on the stereo bus. Lastly, a Curve switch allows changing the knee of the compression curve from Germanium to Zener—the former being a harder, more aggressive sound and the latter being extremely gentle.
