Keeley Compressor

[Jaicen_solo]

Hi,
I was at work today where my friend was showing me his new Keeley compressor, apparently the new four knob version.
He seemed very pleased with it (you'd have to be to spend $200 on a stombox!). Anyway, he said to me that he thought it was the best compressor there is, much better than the dynacomp and Ibanez CS or whatever. Now this got me thinking, is it true that the Keeley Comp is actually a modified Dynacomp/RossComp??
Anybody else heard that?

[vanessa]

Yep. Someone on here owns (owned) one, they traced it out and said it's a Ross clone to the "T".

I should add that it could be choice of components that make the difference.

[Melanhead]

I'll second that, metal film throughout as well  .... I'd also heard that it incorporates some of RG's dynacomp mods as well, although not sure...

I did the ross mod on my old dynacomp ( an old dead script I had lying around ) as well as the variable "attack" feature. I also replaced the caps with metal film. WOW! ... Best compressor I've ever owned! ...

Also did it to a friends reissue and he loves it .... Now I know why the Ross is SO sought after.

[Mark Hammer]

Blame it on Trey Anastasio from Phish.  He made the Ross popular again 4 or 5 years ago, and clones have begun popping up.  Many Ross products were essentially clones of MXR pedals with a few circuit changes that provided some improvements.  MXR themselves changed their circuits over time (though not as willy-nilly as E-H did) and it is quite conceivable that they would have made a couple of changes to the Dynacomp in the same direction as the Ross version did.  A buddy of mine makes a nice Ross clone ( http://www.musictoyz.com/guitar/pedals/retro.php  http://www.pedalgeek.com/cgi-bin/new_shop.cgi?config=&uid=wMVNggAA1134752123&uzc=&command=link--rs  wait until you see the delay he's working on ) with a couple of my suggested mods incorporated, and I'm sure he's not alone.  I can't speak to other companies' practices but I know my buddy tries to use tighter tolerance components and is picky about the transistors in the compressor.  At least part of this is because when you're a small manufacturer, you depend heavily on word of mouth.  Word of mouth, in turn, depends on every item of yours that someone tries out in a store or via e-commerce being consistent in quality.  When you're small, you can't afford for quirk-of-the-tolerances almost-there-but-not-quites to start turning into negative banter on Harmony Central.  One percent resistors are one very inexpensive means of combatting that.