rwl
Well-known member
- Build Rating
This is a report on Dylan159's "That" Compressor. It looked like an interesting circuit to try putting on a PCB, so I figured I'd give it a shot. I don't know what I was thinking - great idea to put a compressor on a custom PCB when you're the kind of guy who can barely tell compressors are on! That said, I think it's a pretty solid compressor - I like it less than my General Tso build, and more than the AionFX Oceanid. Maybe I'm just saying I like it less than a compressor I can hear compressing and more than a compressor that introduces a bunch of background noise. Many of you will be gratified to learn that it doesn't have a blend knob.
Since I laid out the PCB, you can download the gerber file here.
Inspiration
Well, the connection between the bird and the pedal is a bit of a stretch. Dylan159 describes this as a compressor with "very low ripple," and there weren't many other descriptors, so I decided on a diving bird, and I figured that an American Dipper would be a fun one. Dippers are the only diving songbirds. Although they're a little boring-looking, they're also super cool. Here in the Pacific Northwest, you can find them in the Cascades, diving into mountain streams for food. It's the kind of bird I probably never would have looked for or noticed before I started birdwatching. It's really disconcerting to see a bird that looks more appropriate for hiding in a shrub standing on the rock in a middle of a rapids and diving into glacial runoff. You can see that they look a bit like a robin or a large wren than a waterbird.
I'm pretty proud of the concept here. American Dipper - how to make it into a pedal that's more than just a dull-looking bird standing on a rock? Why not mix it with the "Big Dipper" and make a constellation? The shape of the Big Dipper is surprisingly similar. So I decided to go with a star-chart theme from astronomy books I had as a kid, and I'm pretty happy with how it worked out. I have the Dipper holding a little minnow (to be honest, I don't know if they eat minnows vs tadpoles/larva/etc). The stars in the constellation, including the fish, are all in the positions of actual stars if you stargaze near the big dipper, but I connected them to form more of a bird outline and truncated the Big Dipper's "handle" since the American Dipper has a stubby tail.
The overall effect looks very good in my opinion. I only wish I remembered that dark colors on Tayda prints tend to be a little too dark - I would have boosted the colors slightly. And the knobs are great (aluminum Davies 1900H knobs from Tayda). I think these are my favorite knobs right now, they feel very durable, have a nice coolness and heft, fairly bright colors, relatively cheap, and small diameter to leave more space for artwork.
The Build
A straightforward build. This was an early PCB layout for me and I think it turned out well. As with other Dylan159 builds, the components are all easy to source. The PCB worked on the first try and I had no problems with the assembly.
The Pedal
It's a compressor. It definitely does something, but it's pretty subtle even with threshold at a minimum and ratio maxed out. It's more subtle than the General Tso. It also has a built-in boost capability (the "Makeup" knob, which is intended to compensate for any volume loss during compression), which I think is a nice extra touch. The main problem I have is that even with Makeup turned down, there's still a subtle volume boost for me. So it's hard to turn the pedal on and off and to hear just the compression on its own.
I wish I could give the pedal a higher rating. It seems like it's a subtle compressor that subtly compresses, but that's just not very exciting to me.
Firsts
Pedal rating: 3.5/5 (more a reflection of my opinion of compressors than of the pedal)
Since I laid out the PCB, you can download the gerber file here.
Inspiration
Well, the connection between the bird and the pedal is a bit of a stretch. Dylan159 describes this as a compressor with "very low ripple," and there weren't many other descriptors, so I decided on a diving bird, and I figured that an American Dipper would be a fun one. Dippers are the only diving songbirds. Although they're a little boring-looking, they're also super cool. Here in the Pacific Northwest, you can find them in the Cascades, diving into mountain streams for food. It's the kind of bird I probably never would have looked for or noticed before I started birdwatching. It's really disconcerting to see a bird that looks more appropriate for hiding in a shrub standing on the rock in a middle of a rapids and diving into glacial runoff. You can see that they look a bit like a robin or a large wren than a waterbird.
I'm pretty proud of the concept here. American Dipper - how to make it into a pedal that's more than just a dull-looking bird standing on a rock? Why not mix it with the "Big Dipper" and make a constellation? The shape of the Big Dipper is surprisingly similar. So I decided to go with a star-chart theme from astronomy books I had as a kid, and I'm pretty happy with how it worked out. I have the Dipper holding a little minnow (to be honest, I don't know if they eat minnows vs tadpoles/larva/etc). The stars in the constellation, including the fish, are all in the positions of actual stars if you stargaze near the big dipper, but I connected them to form more of a bird outline and truncated the Big Dipper's "handle" since the American Dipper has a stubby tail.
The overall effect looks very good in my opinion. I only wish I remembered that dark colors on Tayda prints tend to be a little too dark - I would have boosted the colors slightly. And the knobs are great (aluminum Davies 1900H knobs from Tayda). I think these are my favorite knobs right now, they feel very durable, have a nice coolness and heft, fairly bright colors, relatively cheap, and small diameter to leave more space for artwork.
The Build
A straightforward build. This was an early PCB layout for me and I think it turned out well. As with other Dylan159 builds, the components are all easy to source. The PCB worked on the first try and I had no problems with the assembly.
The Pedal
It's a compressor. It definitely does something, but it's pretty subtle even with threshold at a minimum and ratio maxed out. It's more subtle than the General Tso. It also has a built-in boost capability (the "Makeup" knob, which is intended to compensate for any volume loss during compression), which I think is a nice extra touch. The main problem I have is that even with Makeup turned down, there's still a subtle volume boost for me. So it's hard to turn the pedal on and off and to hear just the compression on its own.
I wish I could give the pedal a higher rating. It seems like it's a subtle compressor that subtly compresses, but that's just not very exciting to me.
Firsts
First stellar pedal
Pedal rating: 3.5/5
(more a reflection of my opinion of compressors than of the pedal)
