Vactrol - Transparent Optical Compressor

Our newest pedal Vactrol is an exact clone of a Cornish OC-1 Optical Compressor from 2020. We painstakingly reverse engineered the original and replicated it using the same board flow and component layout.

It uses a rare NOS opto-coupler for beautiful transparent compression, specifically designed for guitars.

It uses a feed-forward design and a two stage audio signal path to ensure no change in the frequency response, no distortion and the absolute minimum added noise. We have opted for a hybrid surface-mount PCB design for consistency and for low noise, whilst the essential components are still through-hole and full size.

The design also includes a Clean Blend control! This allows you to add a small amount of the uncompressed signal back in to the output. This means that the normal attack from the guitar can be blended back in, so the sustain is natural and subtle if required.

Features:

Screen printed custom faceplate

Class A Line Driver built in (Cornish LD-1)

NOS NSL Opto-Coupler

Hybrid surface-mount PCB for low noise

Metal film resistors

Alpha pots, Neutrik jack sockets, heavy duty footswitch

Standard 9vDC (centre negative) power input

Handmade in the UK