Supreme Compressor Kit

The Supreme Compressor Kit lets you build your modern OTA based compressor pedal. Operational Transconductance Amplifier based compressors, as the Ross Compressor or the MXR Dynacomp, are widely known and still used as a reference. Actually, most compressors out there are Dynacomp clones with some mods and variations! The Supreme Compressor has been redesigned to use a modern OTA IC (LM13700 instead of the now obsolete CA3080).

One of the main problems of compressors is that they’re very noisy. At low input levels the amplifier is set to have maximum gain, producing the maximum amount of output hum as every small interference and noise in the circuit is picked and amplified. To avoid this, in the Supreme Compressor the OTA is rearranged inside the feedback loop in a way that, to get maximum gain, the OTA amplification is set to the minimum.

– Attack knob you can dial the time it takes to the compression to engage: short attack times will give an almost-instant fast tracking compression, while a longer setting will let go fast string hits and will act depending on the overall volume.

– Release determines how much the gain is reduced during compression.

– Threshold sets how loud the input signal has to be for the compression to kick in. This knob is also known as Sustain or Compression in other compressors.

– Volume adjusts the overall output level.

The Supreme Compressor Kit is based on ValveWizard’s Engineer Thumb, check his website if you want more info about the project!