mkstewartesq
Well-known member
A while back, I tried the ThorpYFX Fat general and the Keeley Compressor Plus - I loved the transparency of the ThorpyFX but also wanted the flat-out (no pun intended) squash of the keeley for when I wanted to play country-style licks on my Tele. So I decided to have the best of both worlds and create a 2-in-1 where I would build the MBP Kompromat for the country stuff ("Nashville" side) and the General Tso as an always-on compressor (the "Everywhere Else" side.
General Tso: No issues with this build, sounds great. I elected to use the Xvive VTL5C4 vactrols in place of rolling my own LED-LDR combos.
Kompromat: The Kompromat is not a direct clone of the Keeley Compressor Plus. Instead it's a mix of the original Keeley Compressor and the Barber Tone Press. Build went well, but it is not as "musical" to my ears as the Compressor Plus. Also, I'm getting a very slight amount of distortion if I have the Attack and Sustain both at max. For this build, you can use either the LM13700 or the CA3080 - I used the former and some of my voltages on that chip are a fair bit off, so I may try to replace it with the CA3080 to see if that makes a difference. Downside is that, per the build docs, the CA3080 may provide a little less compression than the LM13700, and I wanted maximum "squash" - but it's still worth a try to see if the different chip makes any difference to the distortion issue.
Enclosure: Designed by me, drilled, painted and UV printed at Tayda. I only bring this up because this is the first time I've applied gloss (matte) to a pure white surface and, although it's not visible in the pictures, the gloss is actually tinted a bit yellow, which takes away from the "pure white" I was looking for. I also noticed another enclosure I did had a slight yellow tint to the gloss, so I'm not sure if there have been bad batches of the gloss lately or if it's just something I never had occasion to notice before on other pedals.
Thanks for looking,
Mike
General Tso: No issues with this build, sounds great. I elected to use the Xvive VTL5C4 vactrols in place of rolling my own LED-LDR combos.
Kompromat: The Kompromat is not a direct clone of the Keeley Compressor Plus. Instead it's a mix of the original Keeley Compressor and the Barber Tone Press. Build went well, but it is not as "musical" to my ears as the Compressor Plus. Also, I'm getting a very slight amount of distortion if I have the Attack and Sustain both at max. For this build, you can use either the LM13700 or the CA3080 - I used the former and some of my voltages on that chip are a fair bit off, so I may try to replace it with the CA3080 to see if that makes a difference. Downside is that, per the build docs, the CA3080 may provide a little less compression than the LM13700, and I wanted maximum "squash" - but it's still worth a try to see if the different chip makes any difference to the distortion issue.
Enclosure: Designed by me, drilled, painted and UV printed at Tayda. I only bring this up because this is the first time I've applied gloss (matte) to a pure white surface and, although it's not visible in the pictures, the gloss is actually tinted a bit yellow, which takes away from the "pure white" I was looking for. I also noticed another enclosure I did had a slight yellow tint to the gloss, so I'm not sure if there have been bad batches of the gloss lately or if it's just something I never had occasion to notice before on other pedals.
Thanks for looking,
Mike
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