Question for compressor freaks [rothwell love squeeze]

[Cortexturizer]

I am looking at you midwayfair hehe. Kiddin'.

So alright, I'm thinking of building the love squeeze, it's such an easy build, and I never use compression for my clean sound but as a gain boost into a Sunking + Ff 69 [Ge] combo, so I am looking at that one cause supposedly it's great to beef up your overdrives and push em further into a distortion territory.
At the moment, I am using an Orange Squeezer for that and it works nice, except, it's noisy [which supposedly love squeeze isn't] and it reduces treble a little too much [again, which supposedly the love squeeze does not].

I would just throw this compressor in an existing 2-in-1 pedal instead of the Orange Squeezer, so i have room for only one pot, maaaaybe two, if I drill for another one, I think I can do it.

Any suggestions? I'd love to hear opinions on the love squeeze from it's owners?

Also, I haven't played with the Squeezer's trimpot, maybe, just maybe, I could do without circuit changing and just dial a brighter less noisy sound somewhere in there?

[pickdropper]

I won't claim to be the compressor expert Midwayfair is, but I like the Love Squeeze MUCH better than the Orange Squeezer, which isn't my favorite compressor.

[midwayfair]

Well, I have clones of both and the orange squeezer is the one my main board ... Most Orange Squeezers cut a little bass (unless you increase the input cap), and I don't seem to have horrible noise problems (if it's popcorn sounds, you need to rebias it) or treble loss in most of my builds, but maybe it has something to do with using the NE5532 for the op amp, which is a little quieter than the 4558. Or maybe it's just that I don't have a lot of high gain effects amplifying the little bit of noise inherent in the design.

The Lovesqueeze is a fantastic design, but I did have a couple complaints about it, mostly related to the headroom. The LED "limiter" in the feedback loop of the op amp can create some soft clipping even at low (or sometimes "no") compression settings, basically to keep it from misbehaving during the wave cycle while you're waiting for the rectifier to turn on. The LEDs probably have more to do with the sound of the pedal than anything else ... the time constant of the decay is only 100ms, which is extremely short, so you're going to hit the LEDs quiet often. I also didn't think it sounded particularly lively: When they say it's tonally transparent, they're not kidding, though it will have the kind of slightly dulled treble sound that almost all compressors have while compressing.

I'd be lying if I said I fixed all of my (few) complaints with it when I blatantly ripped off the rectifier for the Bearhug. However, I did do a couple things: first, there's no transient clipping (so the pick attack isn't swallowed), and the Bearhug has slightly more headroom in general; and second, it's a hair brighter than the dry signal overall, which is just my preference. It's still quiet. I'm not claiming that it's a better design or even that it's necessarily what you are looking for -- just different.

The Lovesqueeze is probably better for what you want to use it for (pushing an OD), but it won't be THAT much louder even with both knobs at max, because it compresses down to x3.3K (the total value of the gain pot)/whatever the value of the FET current is (so gain is ~10x when the FET is idling at 300R and 1x when the FET gets above 3.3K, at which point the LEDs take over as the only method of compression, but the actual ratio is much smaller in practice ...). It's QUIET signals that are boosted. It sounds like what you want is a booster ... or possibly parallel compression.

EDIT: The Circuit Salad compressors might be worth a look, too: they have a lot of output, plenty of headroom, and the compression is extremely well-managed. They're also dead simple to build, fewer parts even than the Bearhug. I've got a layout in my perf library, and someone made a PCB for the H11F1 version recently.

[jubal81]

If you want to cut the noise and aren't looking for a compressor 'effect' sound, I'd recommend checking out the optical designs. My favorites are the DOD280 and MicTester's really cheap compressor.

I know Jon doesn't want to toot his own horn, but if you want a FET compressor, the Bearhug is damn excellent and a really easy build, without any expensive optocouplers. I just built my second for a multi build I have planned.

[Cortexturizer]

Thank you so much guys for contributing to my search for distortifying overdrives with compressors.

You know what, I'm gonna record a clip as soon as I come home through my board and show you what happens, and also explain what I'd like to happen some more.

At maximum pot rotation the OS is loud enough to make the other pedals after it very fuzzy from the amount of distortion which I like. And I like the lower mid emphasis, as well as the increase in sustain and loudness, what I don't like is that when I play HEAVY rhythm sounds using that comp into drives boosted tone it get's lost in the mix on rehearsals, and of course, because it has reduced treble content. Those are my main two concerns.

But as I said, let's wait for that sound clip. I'll annotate everything and all. Cheers!

[Cortexturizer]

Okay! So here are the clips. Gibson SG Standard into a Vox ac 30 simulation, just a couple of tones. Of course, into an actual amp everything sounds much better but the main characteristics of the sounds and interaction between the pedals is the same.
I was recording 10cm away from my computer display in a very noisy one thousand cables part of the flat so there is much more noise than I experience in the studio or even live. So, here are the clips

[soundcloud]https://soundcloud.com/kuato-design-stompboxes/gain-system-walkthrough/s-M658b[/soundcloud]

[soundcloud]https://soundcloud.com/kuato-design-stompboxes/simple-rhythm-comp-off-then-on/s-6hhjq[/soundcloud]

[soundcloud]https://soundcloud.com/kuato-design-stompboxes/clean-up-comp-guitar-volume/s-7m6py[/soundcloud]

I commented on the clips every time something happened.
So what I am after here, is a compressor change, or introduction of a booster of sorts, that will pump the gain into the pedals that come after it that are on all the time which will get me to tighter distortion teritory. Not as flabby low end like I am experiencing now, nor such loss of treble.

[Cortexturizer]

any thoughts peeps?
I know I played like shite but bare with me

[midwayfair]

Man, that squeezer IS dark and noisy.

It sounds pretty good in the last clip, though ...

There are a couple things going on here. One is that the extra gain is muddying things up. The other is obviously the noise. But you have a lot of gain in this chain. Unless you're looking for more sustain, the signal is already so compressed that a compressor of any kind is just going to make things muddier. But a boost is also going to add noise, especially a bright one. A Mu Amp would be the least noisy at the highest output (though it does have a lot of thermal noise in the low frequencies) but it's not very bright.

What's the signal chain? Are you going fuzz > Sunking > SHO?  Where's the squeezer in that? Is it before the Sunking but after the fuzz?

Oh ... also, your SG's pickups are really hot. I can tell by just how much you're making the Squeezer sag. Basically what's going on there is that your pickups are hitting it hard enough to make it compress completely, so you have to crank up the volume to get back to unity -- giving you a pretty lousy signal:noise ratio. If you lower the bias, you get a little more circuit noise (popcorn sounds etc.), but if you raise the bias it's too compressed. There are a couple things you can try if you want to mod the squeezer. One is simply to raise the threshold. You can do that in a few ways:

• The Fv of D1 determines how much voltage gets into the rectifier. You can use a diode with a higher forward voltage there -- 1N4001, for example, or even an LED if you need to (sockets!).
• R4 also helps set the threshold. You could simply raise that to 1M. It forms a voltage divider with R3, so you may want to raise R3 as well.
• The gain of the entire pedal is set by R9 (and R8). If you increase R9, it won't amplify your pickups as much so you won't get as much compression. However, you also won't get as much output.

[Cortexturizer]

Before I start explaining further, I'll say that I would never use this kind of setup with a different band, or playing some other type of music, or recording any kind of music in a studio.
I arranged things like this so I could have the best possible guitar volume knob clean up thing and still be able to play crushing rhythm parts and fuzzed out long sustaining solos. I play in an experimental rock trio, our sound is dirty, my analog delay is dirty, I don't mind, I like all of that.
I'm not a kind of guy that plays clean passages and then ZAP! you step on a pedal and it's metal mayhem.

The signal chain is like this Orange Squeezer [mostly off] => Sunking => FF 69 with Ge trannies set Vol max, Contour max, Bias on 11 o clock, Fuzz on zero => SHO [Zetex bs-170 inside, huge difference]

Some would say this is all so unnecessary and I'd too, but I like it this way, and every part of the chain does something magical to the end result. At least to me it sounds good, but other people complimented my sound as well live. Dunno.

Man, that squeezer IS dark and noisy.

Yeah, I'm using JRC4558DD I think, might be a D, but I think it's the DD, not sure. Sounded sweeter to me than other ICs.
The sound isn't as near noisy on my amp or in the studio, I use a coily fender cable that's crazy noisy around cable rat nests and desktop computer monitors...but okay, that's not so important, what is, is the noise my OS injects, and it can be heard in the clip quite clearly.

There are a couple things going on here. One is that the extra gain is muddying things up. The other is obviously the noise. But you have a lot of gain in this chain. Unless you're looking for more sustain, the signal is already so compressed that a compressor of any kind is just going to make things muddier. But a boost is also going to add noise, especially a bright one. A Mu Amp would be the least noisy at the highest output (though it does have a lot of thermal noise in the low frequencies) but it's not very bright.

I tried using a Keeley Java Boost clone, it's cool cause it has switchable input caps, and it produced fine results in pushing things to another distorted level but I felt the Squeezer did that better, just needed more highs and a little less compressing on the fatter notes I guess.

Oh ... also, your SG's pickups are really hot. I can tell by just how much you're making the Squeezer sag. Basically what's going on there is that your pickups are hitting it hard enough to make it compress completely, so you have to crank up the volume to get back to unity -- giving you a pretty lousy signal:noise ratio. If you lower the bias, you get a little more circuit noise (popcorn sounds etc.), but if you raise the bias it's too compressed.

The pickups are hot but not overly so, I'd say...I had a similar behavior with my single coil tele actually.
I might open up the pedal though and play with the bias some, and record how it affects the distorting the sound. Could be interesting.

• The Fv of D1 determines how much voltage gets into the rectifier. You can use a diode with a higher forward voltage there -- 1N4001, for example, or even an LED if you need to (sockets!).
• R4 also helps set the threshold. You could simply raise that to 1M. It forms a voltage divider with R3, so you may want to raise R3 as well.
• The gain of the entire pedal is set by R9 (and R8). If you increase R9, it won't amplify your pickups as much so you won't get as much compression. However, you also won't get as much output.

Hm, some easy to try suggestions right here. Will try em out probably.

Hm, I just realised I have an EQ pedal out of the board. Would be interesting putting it before the chain and infusing volume and equalisation into the pedals that come after. We'll see what will happen, maybe it could be enough for the Sunking to further tighten up and distort.

Thank you John for looking into this.

[juansolo]

The love squeeze is ludicrously quiet and transparent (I hate that term). It's one that you only really notice it when you switch it off.

[Cortexturizer]

So another vote for the love squeezer.

I've heard good things about this one too

My favorites are the DOD280 and ...