Advice on attacking a TC Sustain+

[kahel]

Hello good folks. If I may I'd like to direct your attention to the following service manual:
http://www.godiksennet.com/images/sch/TC%20SPE%20ServiceManual.pdf

The TC Sustain+Parametric EQ is IMO a great little compressor with only one little fault: It's too squishy - it's all or nothing in the compression department. So I'm thinking that a variable attack/recovery would be a good mod for this circuit. And since I have two of them I can afford to experiment a little. But I'm a real newbie, and this really doesn't look like a dynacomp at all...

I'm a monster lurker of this incredible forum, and I've thoroughly enjoyed reading the 40 or so pages of accumulated discussion on just what makes the dyna tick - and in doing so learned a lot about reading circuits. I'm hoping I can use this to further educate myself by looking at a different way of accomplishing essentially the same task. And to me it also looks like a good circuit to harvest some other nice bits from, like the EQ stack or maybe the noise suppressor.

So, looking at the schem... top line is obviously input buffer, comp filtering, eq filtering, output buffer... Bottom line is envelope follower for the noise supressor, envelope for compressor, and the boss-type switching scheme... from here on I'm just guessing. It looks to me like the two envelopes are merged, or that the comp only cares for what the gate lets through. I really have no idea how this section works. Anyone care to enlighten me?

There's also two 1K trim pots in the circuit; VR2's in the EQ section and I'm assuming this sets the width of the frequency. The other one looks to me like it might influence level to the envelope stage of the comp, but again, I'm really into deep water here. I feel like I'm trying to understand the entire Egyptian history after learning twenty hieroglyphics. Just hoping somebody else are intrigued enough to give it a go...

Thanks, K.