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
@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