Great sound, questionable jacks

The Punch Factory is a very smooth but chunky compressor. Like its name implies, it's very good at adding some punch to your guitar sound. I usually use it with Drive at 7 and Volume at 8 for a slight volume boost with most of my guitars, especially single coil/Filtertron guitars. Used with an EL84 amp, it's great for clean sounds reminiscent of The Edge, especially in conjunction with a added volume boost at a very low overdrive setting from a tube screamer-type overdrive (e.g., DriveTrain II, the first channel of a Plexitone, etc.). It's decent for the drive channel of your amp as well--it can get a little artificial as the distortion elsewhere in your system gets heavier but it serves double duty as a light volume boost for Strats when it comes time for a solo.

The only downside of the unit in my experience has been the input jack. The first I got was DOA with a dead input jack. The second unit has been good for about 6 months, and now the jack on it is starting to get unreliable so I may have to return this second unit as well. It's not even that the jack is getting a lot of strain; I can't understand why they wouldn't use a more reliable jack. The sound is great, though--better IMO than the Barber TonePress I also own.