Keeley Aria Compressor and Overdrive Pedal Reviews

If I had to pick a pedal that would be my Every Day Carry, this would be it! The compressor is flawless and has improved my tone dramatically. And the drive is everything I need and expect in a drive. Whether I am playing clean, crunchy, or Fuzzy, I think this pedal does it all.

It's actually made me want to ditch some other pedals I have on my board. This is the one I can't live without.

I love this compressor. It really beefs up my strat tone and helps smooth the transition between different types of guitars. The drive portion of the pedal is so versatile and takes my other drive pedals to a whole new level of madness.

I waited to get this to hear the compressor plus side now I wish I would have gotten the compressor plus by itself instead of the Synth-1 pedel / the synths one is almost unusable whereas this pedal will be used every time I plug my guitar in and now I'm going to have to get the compressor plus by itself it's too good not to ..
The Aria and the DDR are the best pedals out there .. the Collider and synth-1 I'm not too happy with as far as the guitar 6 string goes but I still haven't tried it with my bass guitar yet we'll see what happens the guys at Sweetwater are the best thanks

You get a lot of function for not a lot of real estate here.

The compressor is nicely set up and easy to use. You don't get the infinite flexibility of say, a Cali76, but then again, for me, fewer knobs is a feature. If you'd prefer to deal with every aspect of the compressor settings yourself, you should probably look elsewhere, but I like the way they've got this one set up, personally.

On the overdrive side, it's basically a modded Tube Screamer. I think it's one of the best that I've heard in this genre, but basically, it's at heart a TS, so if that works for you, you'll probably like it, but if a TS isn't your thing, it's probably not going to appeal to you.

I use and Hx stomp, and this pedal works great as a compressor and overdrive, saving me two blocks in the HX, which is huge! Highly recommend!

nice pedal easy to figure out and versatile

I needed a compressor and an overdrive to run into the effects loop of my Grace Design Alix preamp. I play a Martin OM Acoustic live at 120+ shows a year. I’m a fan of Keeley, so I decided to give this try and I’m pretty happy I did. The compressor side is great. It makes the guitar sound a little more electric. . . a little more alive. It moves your guitar signal to the front of the mix. Has a great feature that lets you blend the original guitar signal to the compressed signal. It guarantees that your instrument tone won’t be sacrificed. I leave the compressor on all night. The overdrive is cool. It works well with an acoustic. I wasn’t looking for anything too heavy, so the heavy side of this pedal isn’t my thing, but the lower setting is great. I had to crank the volume a little for the dirt side, but it sings. It’s pretty raspy. Does everything from slight breakup to heavy drive. Spend some time tweaking this pedal and I bet you find it’s sweet spot.

This pedal sounds so amazing. It's EXACTLY what I expected and the tone I was hoping for magically appeared. I keep the compressor on at all times, mild settings. I like a clean sound, so I also have the drive set pretty minimally, ala John Mayer, for when I want a bit of drive. I'm not into heavy distorted tones, but of course I have tried them and they also sound amazing. This makes you sound better, period. Oh, and this pedal is also very quiet at minimal to moderate settings. This pedal really came alive to me.

I use it in before the Keeley Caverns V2 front of my UAD Apoolo twin with the free Marshall Plexi plugin set very clean, and for my simple playing, it's all I need.

I run this through the front end of my Mark V:35 and my Mesa 50 Caliber+. I love the compressor! I have it set to just let notes and chords ring and smooth out any volume and pick attack transients. . I love the drive for more aggressive rhythm and searing lead work. The drive is awesome! I don"t like fizzy or buzzy distortion, I like my guitar to "bark" (if that makes any sense) and this pedal finds my perfect sound.

The Keely Aria was just what I wanted/needed. I always like compression at the front of my sig path and this gives me one less pedal in my set up. The Aria is a wonderfully thought out in design and the sound
is crystal clear. I would suggest this pedal to anyone not needing fuzz. Also, would like to thank Delvin
Wolfe, my guitar guy for years, great knowledge and very helpful in fulfilling all of my guitar dreams.
THANKS SWEETWATER!

Great sounding pedal...the compressor side lets you add just the right amount of "squeeze" without adding noise. The overdrive is mid-range focused so cuts through well. Overall a very useful pedal and is the core of my pedalboard. As always, super service from sales engineer Paul Eckert and all at Sweetwater.

I've had this pedal for awhile now and I'm just now getting around to the review. First off I think it's beneficial for you to know my rig. I play through a 90's model Fender Blues Deville 212 using either an Epiphone Les Paul Standard, Warmoth Telecaster build, and a parts caster. The compressor side is amazing and works well with all three guitars. The blend function is incredibly versatile so you can dial in the right amount of compression you desire. The drive side I find a little picky. I really like the sound I get with single coils on both the low and high gain settings. With humbuckers, it seems almost too mid focused. I find myself turning the tone knob almost all the way up to bring some treble back in. My only real issue is, if I am switching between guitars, I have to dial in the pedal to that guitar specifically. You have to spend time with this pedal and get familiar with how it interacts with your rig. At the end of the day, it's a great compressor and a great tube screamer pedal all in one. I would highly recommend this pedal to anyone playing blues, country, or classic rock. Hope this review helps you out!

Awesome pedal! Packs a punch with the drive, and the compressor is excellent. Wish there was a little bit more flexibility/options with tones, but the combo is so useful. Totally worth it!

I look for pedals that are quiet and quality delivering uniqueness to my guitar and amp tone. This Aria was the perfect addition. 9v DC power for 2 distinct effects, overdrive and compression with the ability to change their sequence with a mere toggle switch... and the perfect size.

This pedal was a homerun. I've been looking for a new compressor but still loved my Keeley compressor sound. This was definitely an upgrade in the compressor department. Simple enough controls, great amount of squish, and low noise. The drive side of this pedal is also fantastic. It is a bit dark for my taste. Obviously has a pronounced midrange, as the red dirt overdrive is based on a tube screamer. But, it offers a lot of range on the drive side. I love it. Good for chunky rhythms and singing lead tones.

First off, this pedal was exactly what my band was looking for. Our rhythm guitarist uses a Supro Neptune that has a really great clean tone but we wanted something a little crunchier and the Aria delivered. The compression is subtle but really smooths our the dynamics, and the drive set to Low-Gain gives just the right touch of grit (we don't use the high gain setting all that much, but when we played around with the pedal it definitely has a lot of power).

The issue with this pedal is that the Lo/Hi Gain switch is right next to the footswitch. If you stomp too hard your foot will hit the Gain Switch and damage it. Within two weeks of using the pedal the Lo-Gain setting cut out. You'd have to crank the volume and the gain to get even close to same volume as your dry signal, and while the Hi-Gain setting still worked, it just wasn't the sound we were going for so the pedal was kind of useless for us after that. I got in touch with my guy Ed Needler at SW and he set me up with a replacement right away (that classic SW customer service) and so far no issues. Hopefully this issue doesn't keep up, because the tone we got from this pedal was perfect.

This was my first venture into compressor pedals, and I was attracted to the fact that it has a drive side as well. however, as much as I am happy with the compressor, I have not been able to find any drive settings that really suit my taste. the Low Drive setting has not produced anything for me, and the High Drive setting is not what I am looking for. This is something that I would recommend trying out before purchasing to make sure that you are happy with the drive side.

The low drive side will not work on it's own and is voiced really dark and compressed. When you add the compressor it works a little better. The high drive side is pretty good and very usable with and without compression. After playing this, I will be returning this pedal.

If you're into ANY kind of rock, and you've been playing long enough to have played through several different overdrives so that you've got some basis for comparison, this is NOT the pedal for you, because this pedal's overdrive is easily one of the worst I've ever tried. I did an A/B comparison with a Pigtronix Fat Drive ( no longer in production ), which isn't the best OD out there, but it's definitely an above average, versatile overdrive that has identical knobs and an identical low/high gain switch. The tone of the red dirt OD is all wrong...it has no balls, no bass, and experimenting with the tone knob didn't help much. The low side has a darker tone and has so little gain it's useless for anything. The high side still doesn't have much gain compared to most overdrives, and no, I'm not into heavy metal. I'm mainly into classic rock style overdrive, so I usually play on the low gain side of the Pigtronix..This pedal is useless for ANY kind of rock. I wouldn't even take this pedal to a church gig. The high gain side of the red dirt is about the same amount of gain as the low gain side of the Pigtronix, but the Pigtronix has a much better tone overall. As for the compressor, it's pretty good, very transparent. The only complaint I had with the compressor is when you turn the sustain up anywhere near the max, the hiss is VERY noticeable the second you stop playing. You'll have to set your noise gate towards its max setting to make the hiss bearable. A good pedal will inspire you to play more and play better. The ONLY thing THIS pedal inspired me to do is put it back in its box and drive to the post office to return it. Seriously.

I thought I could conjure cool sounds from anything but the aria is not working right or I don't know how to operate it. Probably a good product just not for me.