Best full featured compressor?

[Jaicen_solo]

I need a quality compressor for my pedal board, it needs to be clean and fast, so probably has to be FET based and can be 18v or more.
I need attack, ratio, gain and release controls as a minimum with ratios of up to 4:1.

Is there a diy option for something like this??

[bloxstompboxes]

No need for any of that crap! Check out the Engineer's Thumb Compressor.

[Transmogrifox]

+1 Engineer's Thumb

If you must be much more technically "precise" you might build a channel of one of the RANE compressors:
http://www.rane.com/pdf/dc22ssch.pdf

Schematic Page 3 circuitry  surrounding U7, U9, U11, U12... is the Left Channel compressor circuit.  This operates on +/- 15V supply so it has plenty of headroom if you need this for some purpose.

It's really overkill for a stompbox, but if you want all of the above, a channel of the dc22 would do ya'. Since the Rane is very nearly an image of THAT corporation application note, this may make it easier to dissect into the important parts:
http://www.thatcorp.com/datashts/dn00A.pdf

[amptramp]

You can try this:



Oh, wait a minute - is this for spraying paint or crushing music?

[bloxstompboxes]

There is a 5 knob version of the Engineer's Thumb but the site is frozen at the moment. Here is the thread on it on our site here.

http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=97123.0

Oops. never mind. Here is it is:

http://www.valvewizard.co.uk/engineersthumb.html

[bluebunny]

Another vote for the Engineer's Thumb.  It's very good.

[notnews32]

The most full-featured compressors I know are these:
Empress' Compressor
Keeley's Compressor Pro
Joe Meek's FloorQ

And then there are two that are expensive but are known to be two of the best stompbox- sized comps out there:
Cali76's line of comps
FEA Labs' line of comps

Both the FEA and Cali comps can run upwards of 3/400 dollars or even more for the totally loaded options, but the reviews are nothing short of stellar. Definitely consider your comp needs and take a look at these 5 comps.