Fender The Bends, Manual

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.

THE BENDS

DESIGNED IN CALIFORNIA, U.S.A.