Constrictor (Demeter Compulator) - More fun with buffers...

MichaelW

Well-known member
This is my second optical compressor build, I've been interested in the Demeter Compulator for a while due to it's claim to be a more transparent compressor. (WILL NOT SUCK YOUR TONE seems to be all over the add copy). The demo's I've heard all sound pretty good.

@szukalski kinda pushed me over the edge when he built his so I went ahead and ordered the board.

Also, as a bit of an experiment I decided to use one the Simple JFet buffer boards that I grabbed from PPCB some time ago. My intention was to have a buffered output pedal that switched on and off with the pedal. I'm not completely sure I wired it correctly but will start a separate troubleshooting thread for the couple of questions/issues I have.

I started putting this together Saturday evening and expected to spend maybe 45 min boxing it all up Sunday afternoon and be rocking.......so 3 hours later on Sunday....I was still futzing with it. It was just one of "those builds" where things didn't go as smooth as intended. I had a bad A25k pot that took me forever to track down. It felt funny when I turned the knob and I should have measured it before installing.....sigh. I think it might have had a cracked wafer or something. In the process of removing the A25 I melted the first vactrol I had installed, arrrghhhh, so I had to replace that as well, which resulted in a fluxy mess that I took me a while to clean up with IPA and q-tips.

I didn't have the called for A20k pots and thought I could get away with A25k pots but somehow it didn't sound right so I added some resistors in parallel and now seem to get a fuller sweep on both pots.

The pedal sounds really good as expected, it's a subtle compressor, not really suitable (imo) if you're looking for a really squashed sound. There's not as much gain as I was expecting, even with the gain trimmer maxed. So one quandry is choosing a gain setting. It sounds best with my single coils with the gain trimmer maxed out but with hum buckers it sounds better with the trimmer dialed back a bit as it will clip with the higher output pickups. Right now, I'm kinda picking a "split the difference" setting but I might relegate it to the setting where it sounds best with the single coils and use it only for that purpose.

The controls are limited, which was one thing I found appealing. Comparing it side by side with the only other optical compressor I have, the Cornish OC-1, it definitely colors the tone less. It sounds like a compressor that you don't really know is on until you turn it off. Which is kind of what I wanted. It sounds great in front of an overdrive pedal, adding sustain and tightening transients. I was messing around with it on my Dumbloid build which tends towards the fizzy side at higher gain settings and the Constrictor does a great job knocking some of that down.

My next optical compressor build will be going to the other extreme, The Delegate Boneyard Edition with six😳 controls......I tend to go into "option overload" mode when faced with too many knobs, but we'll see:)

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Nice! It’s the tricky ones which gain the experience.

I forgot it had a gain trimmer, I’m not sure I’ve used it but I tend to keep this one for single coils. Just to drive things a bit hotter.

The Delegate has all the proper compressor knobs, nothing that 10 minutes of learning won’t explain if you don’t know compressor theory already. I don’t know why it keeps getting bumped from my cart each time I have to thin the purchase herd.
 
That’s a healthy-looking 1u cap you’ve got there Michael. I know, “shut up Fig”. :ROFLMAO:

I’m happy you got it sorted. I think you’ll like the Delegate once you’ve found “the setting”. There are several pedals I rarely adjust and could easily yank switches and replace pot-settings with resistors without looking back. THAT would be a custom pedalboard…one with all the effects built to taste and no controls.

What’s next?
 
That’s a healthy-looking 1u cap you’ve got there Michael. I know, “shut up Fig”. :ROFLMAO:

I’m happy you got it sorted. I think you’ll like the Delegate once you’ve found “the setting”. There are several pedals I rarely adjust and could easily yank switches and replace pot-settings with resistors without looking back. THAT would be a custom pedalboard…one with all the effects built to taste and no controls.

What’s next?
Yah I bought a bunch of the wrong sized 1u caps when I was first starting out and didn't know wtf I was doing.......(I'm not that much further along tbh......heh.....as evidenced by my goober'd up buffer board install......) I'm trying to use up those caps where I can fit them.
 
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Update: Many thanks to @ICTRock and @temol in my troubleshooting thread.

Did a little surgery during my lunch break, more fluxy mess, more IPA and cleaning up but the buffer is wired correctly now. I even managed to not melt anything....! Woot!

I decided to to put it after the effect as opposed to before. I'm not really concerned with having buffered signal coming into the compressor but rather downstream of it. The board fits better in the enclosure now too.

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