freestompboxes.org

Hi all,

I found this transistor compressor while scrawling through the net. I thought it would be an interesting pedal for a guitar or bass just by changing the input impedance which wouldn't be hard and it allready has an attenuated output pot so that would be ok also. But yeah check it out and tell me what you thinks. Cheers

It was designed for line level signals, and has a very fast attack and slow decay. If you want to use it for guitar, it'll need an amplifying buffer stage before it, with a gain of around 8 - 10 dB (unless you're using a Telecaster - you'll need 12 dB at least!). This buffer will also need a high input impedance.

It's not a very good design (it was OK at the time and was cheap for Small Practical Innovation to manufacture) - it suffers from strange distortion artefacts, and never really offered the depth of attenuation that would make it useful for guitar.

when i was looking at the design from the beggining the first thing i wanted to change was its side chain to improve both attack and release. I have found transistor attentuation to be better for bass than fet all depending of course how designed. But for simpler compressor's the transistor attenuation seems to sound warmer and smoother. Don't really know why.