Guardians of the analog
Papi Fuego
- Build Rating
Dave @szukalski and I are on a roll bringing back forgotten favorites and hidden jems from the dead. Next up is a compressor of mythical status. A true titan in the world of country and Gilmour fans, but being neither of those things I wanted to build this because I've never had one before. The sheepylove squish is a faithful reproduction (95%) of the classic Boss CS-2 compression sustainer. When researching I found a pdf by someone who made a schematic and pcb for the cs-2 but they were not reachable. They made a subtle change in the power section to make it easier to build and used modern components so we worked off that schematic.
After the success of the TR-2 there was a momentum and a what's next? moment. I was at the time looking at the CS-2 and looking for the long out of production BA662 IC. This was the heart and soul of the pedal. The chip was produced until the mid 80s and was used by Roland in synthesizers and a couple pedals, namely the CS-2. The chip is like an improved CA3080 OTA, but with lower noise floor. When the chip was EOL boss did a redesign of the compressor circuit and the CS-3 was born. In recent years the 662 was reintroduced as a dual IC in smd format and as a SIP smd work a like by open labs. The SMD IC we ran into a snag but will be fixed by Dave in a new revised board. The open labs chip works flawlessly.
So what is the CS-2 like? If you look at the schematic it's pretty much just a Dyna/Ross. The pedal to me has a lower noise floor than a dyna Ross with a greater dynamic range that doesn't pump either. The attack pot on the circuit is something implemented by Keeley in his compressors to help preserve the initial transient and have a more natural onset of the compression. Compared to the CS-3 this is much more smooth and natural sounding. The CS-3 is more of a hard limiter with a real all or nothing quality and this has a much softer knee and more organic than the CS-3. I didn't think I could like a comp this much without a blend knob but it's a fantastic pedal. The way it gives such clarity and evenness to chords and heft to single notes, I may never turn it off, just adjust the attack and sustain to what I'm playing. Oh yeah, it's good on bass too.
For the enclosure I went with a blue tayda enclosure and UV print. I decided to go with a color palette that matched the original and used Mr. Fantastic for the artwork since no one squishes like Reed Richards. All in all Dave did a fantastic job with a great layout and made it all fit wonderfully in a 125b. Can't wait to get this one out in the wild and see other people building it. For the demo, it's hard to showcase a compressor because so much of it is about feel, but I tried anyways. Chords and single notes to show the squash. To me it has less squeeze than the ROSS but more than an optical.
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