As a compressor, the Bloom features an optical limiting circuit that takes its inspiration from compressors designed during the golden age of vacuum tube circuits. Optical compressors as they are called, are known for their transparency and subtlety. While the Bloom can provide a very aggressive response at more extreme compression settings, its real strength lies in its ability to add a gentle sweetening and roundness to the tone as the optical circuit works to polish off any rough edges in the sound.
Because of its natural and touch responsive bloom, the Bloom is ideal for players who typically don’t use compression but want the ‘mastered’ response that optical compression gives a guitarists tone.
The frequency response of the compressor section is flat as a board and does not boost or cut any of your highs or lows. In fact for the demo videos JA recorded, Dow Tomlin (Bass Player for Wynonna Judd) used the Bloom on his bass the entire time and loved it! Just like a well-designed compressor should, the Bloom alters the dynamics of the guitar signal and not the tone. A good compressor should be felt and not heard.
During the design phase of the Bloom JA consulted with slide master Joey Landreth, of The Brothers Landreth fame, on what an ideal compressor for guitarists as well as slide players would be. After going back and forth with him it soon became clear that to build the ultimate compressor for guitarists they would have to include the option to run two compressors in series with each other to provide the legendary Lowell George slide tone. Lowell George, the bandleader/singer/songwriter/guitarist for the band Little Feat was famous for using two Urei 1176 compressors in series with each other to give his guitar near-infinite sustain while still remaining crystal clean.
When set to compression preset 5 or “Slide Mode” the aux compressor circuit is activated and placed in series ahead of the primary compressor. The tonal result of using two compressors in series is that notes will sustain almost endlessly and oftentimes break out into harmonic feedback while still remaining clear and clean! It ‘feels’ like you have an overdrive pedal on but the tone is still clean with endless sustain!
Hidden inside the Bloom, is an auxiliary compressor circuit that is identical to the main compressor circuit however without externally mounted controls. This aux compressor, which is set with a fast attack of 7.5ms, has two trimmers mounted on the right side of the pedal and are accessible when the cover is removed. These trimmers allow you to adjust the COMP and VOLUME settings of the aux compressor when using compression presets 5 and 6. More on compression presets later.
When more subtlety is desired from the compression circuit, JA has included a BLEND control that allows the player to blend in their clean, unaffected signal back in with the compressed signal. One of the best features of the Blend control is that it allows the player to dial in a really aggressive compression setting and then blend some of their clean signal back in with it. This produces the effect of giving the note a very natural attack while slowly fading in the sustain that comes from running a high compression setting.
If you’re not a studio engineer, many of the more fully-featured compressors on the market can be really intimidating and overwhelming with knobs for everything including attack, release, ratio, knee, etc. As a guitar player, we typically like to keep things as simple as possible and prefer to think in terms of which settings would be the most appropriate for the style of music I’m about to play.
Not all players are the same and not all songs require the same compression settings, that’s why we have designed the Bloom to have six compression presets that give the player six distinct options for their attack and release settings. These settings run the gamut from subtle to extreme and allow the player to quickly dial in the perfect compression setting for the next song.
Note that each compression preset has its own color setting on the COMP led. This led color will change as you play and will change more dramatically the harder you play and especially when higher settings on the COMP control are used. If you see the color change, that means that the compressor is ducking the level of what you are playing.
Since the BLOOM first came out, JA has received many requests from players saying that adding MIDI to the BLOOM would make it the perfect compressor and they completely agreed! They always take player feedback as a primary driver of product development and they are very proud to announce that the most flexible compressor on the just got better with the addition of MIDI! NOTE: In order to accommodate this new feature, for space reasons, we were required to eliminate the SIDECHAIN that the original BLOOM featured.
CABLE INFORMATION: In order to use MIDI on the BLOOM v2, you will need a cable that converts a MIDI (DIN-5) connector to a TRS cable.
