Becos Effects CompIQ MINI ONE Pro Compressor

The Becos Effects CompIQ MINI ONE Pro Compressor is an analog compressor pedal for guitar and bass, built in a mini enclosure and made in Romania. Its compression comes from a THAT Corp Analog Engine, a pairing of a true RMS-level sensor and a Blackmer voltage controlled amplifier (VCA), the kind of circuit found in studio dynamics processors. Becos says the design is intended for high-quality VCA dynamic processing and to deliver what the company calls "perfect timings for any playing style"¹².

Controls and how it works

The MINI ONE Pro keeps things simple. Where Becos's larger compressor pedals carry a long row of knobs, this one has two main controls, Ratio and Gain, plus a Sense threshold switch and a dry/wet mix control¹².

The attack and release are handled automatically. The pedal uses a Dynamic Auto Attack and a Release Timing circuit that adapts to the input signal envelope, so there are no attack or release knobs to set¹. The knee, meaning how gradually the compression engages around the threshold, is fixed: the pedal arrives with a pre-determined knee setting that Becos describes as giving a "subtle and transparent effect application", and there is no knee switch².

The dry/wet mix is worth a note for players new to compression: blending some clean signal back in with the compressed signal is the parallel compression approach, and it lets you keep attack and dynamics while still evening out the level. Guitar.com's reviewer found the mix control effective but small and fiddly to use³.

The Sense switch

Sense sets the threshold, the level above which the compressor starts to work. It has two preset positions¹:

• Low: fixed at -40dB
• High: set with an internal trimmer, adjustable from -40dB to +10dB

That internal trimmer matters in practice: dialing the High setting means opening the pedal up, so most players will set it once for their instrument and leave it. With Low at -40dB, quieter signals will trigger compression, which suits lower-output instruments¹.

Guitar and bass

Becos designed the MINI ONE Pro to be used for both guitar and bass, and Guitar.com likewise described it as tailored for both instruments¹². The Sense switch is the main tool for matching the pedal to either instrument, since bass and guitar put out different levels.

Power and bypass

The pedal has true bypass switching, so the compression circuit is completely out of the signal path when off¹². Power comes from a 9 to 12V mains supply only, and the adapter is not included with the pedal³.

Where it sits in the CompIQ range

The MINI ONE Pro is part of Becos's CompIQ range, and it is the streamlined option. Guitar Pedal X's Stefan Karlsson, reviewing the range, described the Mini One as "another tiny pedal but this time distinguished by having a much lower knob count than most of the company's compressors", with a default hard knee and just four controls: RATIO, Make-up GAIN, SENSE (Hi/Lo threshold) and WET > DRY mix, alongside built-in auto and dynamic attack and release timings⁴. The larger CompIQ pedals, such as the Becos CompIQ Mini One family's bigger siblings in the range, add controls like selectable knee, feed-forward and feed-back modes and more detailed timing adjustments⁴. If you want set-and-forget compression in a small enclosure, the MINI ONE Pro is the simpler take; if you want to shape every parameter, the rest of the range goes further.

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