Bear Hug Compressor Question

[mjcyates]

So I just finished building the Bear Hug compressor. I have not boxed it up yet, but I played through it. Everything seems to be working properly, however, the compression is extremely subtle, more subtle than the Afterlife compressor that I built. Is it supposed to be this subtle? I did use 100k for R10. There is very little difference in the two toggle positions. Just wondering if this is the expected behavior or if I might have gotten something wrong.

[midwayfair]

So I just finished building the Bear Hug compressor. I have not boxed it up yet, but I played through it. Everything seems to be working properly, however, the compression is extremely subtle, more subtle than the Afterlife compressor that I built. Is it supposed to be this subtle? I did use 100k for R10. There is very little difference in the two toggle positions. Just wondering if this is the expected behavior or if I might have gotten something wrong.

You can verify if it's working properly by probing the resistance between the source of Q3 and ground at idle and when it's playing with the comp knob at max. It should jump up from ~300 Ohms to somewhere between 1K and 2K when playing, maybe higher on a hard strum. If not, then I have some suggestions.

Keep in mind that with a fast attack and recovery, it's going to sound subtle pretty much no matter what. It was designed to prevent volume spikes and boost the signal, rather than for all-out squash or sustaining. However, the gain drop is pretty significant in practice at max compression (for comparison, it's like turning the boost pot on a Thunderpuss halfway down and then back up again really quickly), even though it's hard to hear it working.