Keeley Aria Compressor Drive

The Keeley Aria Compressor Drive is a two-in-one stompbox from Keeley Electronics that puts a compressor and an overdrive in a single enclosure. Keeley announced it as "a powerful stomp box that combines modern Keeley Compression with our classic Red Dirt Overdrive!"¹ The compressor side carries the tone and blend features of Keeley's Compressor Plus, while the drive side is built on the touch-sensitive circuit from the Red Dirt Overdrive¹²³.

What sets the Aria apart from most two-in-one pedals is its TRS insert jacks. These divide the pedal into two separate units, so you can insert other effects between the compressor and the overdrive, place each half in a different loop of a loop switcher, or switch the order of the two effects¹³.

Compressor and overdrive in one pedal

The Aria teams the Keeley Compressor with the Red Dirt Overdrive, two of the effects Keeley was best known for⁷. On the compressor side you get Level, Blend, Sustain and Tone knobs, a control layout Pedal of the Day described as similar to those on the Compressor Plus⁵⁷. The drive side carries Level, Drive and Tone knobs plus low and high gain switches⁷⁸.

The two halves are designed to work together. Keeley's announcement explains the reasoning behind each order:

• Compressor before overdrive gives a consistent gain level into the drive¹.
• Overdrive before compressor, in Keeley's words, "offers players a very warm and rounded, smooth and even tone with tons of sustain"¹.

The drive section itself is a two-mode overdrive with soft clipping that Delicious Audio describes as giving "a transparent boost to midrange frequencies"². Guitar.com reported Keeley calling the Aria its "most flexible overdrive to date"⁶.

Controls

The Blend control is the feature carried over from the Compressor Plus. Pedal of the Day calls it unique on the compressor side, letting you "stir and mix your wet and dry signals together perfectly to taste, for as much or as little compression as you see fit"⁵. Delicious Audio adds that it "lets you mix any amount of clean signal for punchy chord work"².

TRS insert jacks and switchable effects order

The Aria's TRS insert jacks are its most distinctive routing feature. Keeley's press release says they "allow you to divide the pedal into two units. Insert effects between the two sides"¹. Guitar World described the same capability, with effects placed between the two halves⁸.

On That Pedal Show, Dan and Mick covered the practical use for players with larger boards: the TRS jacks "function like the D&M Drive to enable you to place each effect in different loops on a true bypass loop switcher"⁴. That means the compressor and the overdrive can be engaged separately from a switcher rather than only together, and the order of the two effects can be switched instantly⁵.

For a player deciding where a compressor sits in a chain, the Aria covers both camps without rewiring: squeeze first for even level into the drive, or drive first and compress after it for the smoother, sustain-heavy character Keeley describes¹.

Built on the Compressor Plus circuit

The compressor side of the Aria draws on the Keeley Compressor Plus, which launched in 2017 at $129⁹. Aion FX, which traced the Compressor Plus circuit in 2023, found that internally "it's a Ross/Dyna Comp as with the original compressor circuit," with the Attack knob from the earlier compressor converted to a switch, and an output that is in-phase with the input, unlike the earlier Keeley Compressor and almost all other Ross/Dyna-derived circuits¹⁰¹¹.

The drive side comes from a different lineage: the touch-sensitive drive circuit of Keeley's Red Dirt Overdrive, as Sweetwater's Don Cara explained in the company's demo video³. In the demo, Cara walked through both halves of the pedal, the compressor's Level, Blend, Sustain and Tone controls, and the drive section's low and high gain modes³.

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Where it came from and what it costs

Keeley announced the Aria at Winter NAMM 2018⁶. The company's press release set availability for June 28, 2018 at dealers worldwide and at RKFX.com for $199¹. Guitar World and MusicRadar both reported the pedal as available at that $199 price⁷⁸, and Guitar.com gave the same list price⁶.

For comparison, the Compressor Plus that the Aria's compressor side is based on launched at $129 in 2017⁹, so the Aria's two-in-one format carried a premium over the standalone compressor at launch.

Videos

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Questions