Ross Or Dynacomp?

[vikki]

My Tonepad board just arrived, would you build the Ross or the Dynacomp on it? I'm into the country picking thing, perhaps neither are right for this, but which one seems to work the best? Would you use any special low noise resistors or are they all about the same in this circuit?
Vikki(uk)

[Seljer]

the Dynacomp, the Ross has bit of a deeper bassier sound to it

[markm]

I personally like the DynaComp a bit better for Country.....it's more of the "Classic" Compressor for C&W pickin'.
I've built a few and my favorite uses regular run-of-the-mill components and I think it sounds great.
Noise?? You can't hear any noise from the compressor in a crowded Honky-Tonk!
Especially when the fights start!! 

[Processaurus]

The ross was a redesign by the orignal dynacomp designer for ross, it made a couple improvements that are good house keeping and could hardly have an effect on tone like, bypass caps in the Vref (Ca), that can help reduce noise.   Same story on Cc.  I don't know what Rc and Cb do, more PS filtering for that transistor stage?   It also has a cap to ground in the begining  (Cd in the tonepad schematic) that loses some treble (in an attempt to make it seem less noisy). 

Basically if I wanted the dynacomp sound, I'd build the ross and ditch that Cd cap, or make it littler so it gets rid of RF but not audio freq.   If you want more treble than the dynacomp, I gotten some good milage out of the Hammer mod of putting a smallish cap (.001 worked for me) in parallel with the 10K resistor before the volume pot.

Don't worry about low noise resistors, the OTA chip's so noisy relatively it won't make any worthwhile difference.

[vikki]

Thanks again.....
Just wondering if the Keeley units are along the lines of one of these units?
Vikki(uk)

[markm]

I'm not a Keeley fan.
Doesn't mean they're not any good I just don't think it's worth the $$$.
Tonight I've been playing around with my Saffron Squeeze build and I must say....It's impressive!

[vikki]

I did a search for Saffron squeeze, will that fit on the Tonepad Dyna board? All these names beat me
Vikki(uk)

[blanik]

The ross was a redesign by the orignal dynacomp designer for ross, it made a couple improvements that are good house keeping and could hardly have an effect on tone like, bypass caps in the Vref (Ca), that can help reduce noise.   Same story on Cc.  I don't know what Rc and Cb do, more PS filtering for that transistor stage?   It also has a cap to ground in the begining  (Cd in the tonepad schematic) that loses some treble (in an attempt to make it seem less noisy).

Basically if I wanted the dynacomp sound, I'd build the ross and ditch that Cd cap, or make it littler so it gets rid of RF but not audio freq.   If you want more treble than the dynacomp, I gotten some good milage out of the Hammer mod of putting a smallish cap (.001 worked for me) in parallel with the 10K resistor before the volume pot.

Cd in the Tonepad layout is only 220pF i doubt it sucks a lot of treble (i might be wrong  )

i found some mods in here:
http://www.lynx.bc.ca/~jc/pedalsDynacomp.html

basicly what it says:
The 0.001uF cap which acts to shunt highs to ground across the 150k OTA load resistor can be lowered or elliminated to give the circuit full or emphasized top end response - ie. around 330pF for flat or none for slight top end emphasis ...
The output signal cap 0.05u can be enlarged to a 1uF Tantalum to give the circuit full bottom end response ...
... these two swaps lead to a much clearer and fuller sounding compressor - of course, you should set these according to your taste and gear ... remember, they called this circuit a compressor but really it's more of a limiter - compressors act to maintain a constant signal level even when the signal goes low whereas this circuit (like most of them) settles back to a preset gain level ... so this circuit more-or-less curbs the attack levels and lets decay levels die down instead of amplifying them to keep the output constant ... still, one can ride the attack/decay envelopes and within this range the circuit sort-of acts as a compressor ... a pretty bland circuit really ...


has anyone ever tried those? i always felt my TP Ross had enough highs but lacked some lows maybe it's just an impression due to the fact the comp might squeeze the overall freq (headroom?)

[KB]

Hi Vikki

The saffron is supposed to be a modded Ross/Dynacomp

just in case you have not found it there is a schematic in Steve C's album

http://aronnelson.com/gallery/SteveC/saffron2

not tried it but looking at the schematics I think it could be made to fit on the tonepad board.

Kevin

[markm]

has anyone ever tried those? i always felt my TP Ross had enough highs but lacked some lows maybe it's just an impression due to the fact the comp might squeeze the overall freq (headroom?)

I tried 'em.
Too bright and too bassy IMO.

Hi Vikki

The saffron is supposed to be a modded Ross/Dynacomp

just in case you have not found it there is a schematic in Steve C's album

http://aronnelson.com/gallery/SteveC/saffron2

not tried it but looking at the schematics I think it could be made to fit on the tonepad board.

Kevin

I don't think the Saffron mods will fit "comfortably" on the TP board.
A dedicated Saffron Squeeze project is in the layouts gallery (how quickly we forget about our own layouts here! )
Have a look.

[brett]

Hi
IMO the Ross has too little top end.  Maybe that's because I've got humbuckers, too, which have high output impedance, and emphasise any cap-to-ground filtering. 
The Dyna is really good, and compares quite well to the Boss CS-2.  Yeah, I have one - it was cheap ($15) .
cheers

[KB]

Hi Mark

I should have guessed when you mentioned your own build...

Just had another look at your layouts.  Some very nice work there congratulations.

Kevin...