Fender The Bends User Manual

THE BENDS

10

5 6

3

2

LEDs

DRIVE RECOVERY

COMPDRY

BLEND

9V DC
INPUT

11

74

SLOWFAST

LEVEL

1

1. Bypass Footswitch

2. Jewel Indicator

3. Output Jack

4. Blend

5. Drive

6. Recovery

THE BENDS

7. Level

8. Input Jack

9. Low Battery Indicator

10. LED Kill Switch

11. DC Power Connector

8

9

THE BENDS

Thanks for purchasing the Bends—a richly featured compressor
designed especially for electric guitar and bass. The Bends is a
powerful and easy-to-use sound processor.

A compressor is a sound processor that decreases an instrument’s
dynamic range. It does this by increasing overall signal level to make
quiet sounds louder, and then automatically turning down
excessively loud sounds. This dual-action operation makes quiet
sounds louder and loud sounds quieter.

Why is this desirable? For clean guitar and bass sounds, compression
evens out playing dynamics so that musicians needn’t play with
perfect dynamics to achieve a consistent performance. With
single-note soloing or lead playing, adding a healthy dose of
compression increases sustain and can give the impression of playing
with distortion even though the sound is completely clean. For
distorted guitar sounds, adding compression helps increase sustain
when using less amplifier gain, which can result in clearer, more
articulate tone that still has power and bite. With bass, compression
keeps volume consistent when, for example, a player changes
techniques from finger style to slapping.

On the downside, too much compression sometimes removes
important dynamic information, such as the transient that happens
when a guitar pick leaves the string at the very front of the note. The
Bends has two features that can help with this—the Gain Reduction
jewel indicator and the Blend control.

Finally, the Bends has a carefully designed audio path that uses a
duplicate circuit in critical spots to help reduce noise.

DESIGNED IN CALIFORNIA, U.S.A.