Mozztronics CS-3 Comp Sustain

PRODUCT DESCRIPTION

Peerless Music is proud to be an authorised dealer for Mozztronics: Effects pedals for guitar and bass, hand made in Australia by electrical engineer and musician Andrew Macdonald.

CS-3 COMP SUSTAIN

DESCRIPTION FROM MOZZTRONICS:

We’re going back to the “groovy” 70s with this one.

I was reading about Angus’ setup and the wireless system he used. Apparently he liked it so much he even recorded with it in the studio. So I looked at what was involved in the wireless system that might contribute to his sound, apart from the obvious brilliant playing, fingers, strings, SG, pickups, Marshall etc.

Drilling down, there was a limiter in there, that makes sense, the radio signal has a limited signal strength so to get the best signal to noise ratio compressing the heck out of a signal makes sense as the radio works more efficiently. The compression would also add a lot of sustain and might be the reason Angus liked it so much.

So I took that limiter circuit and added my own tweaks. I increased the range of the compression ratio so it could act more like a compressor as well as a limiter, I added a dry blend (parallel compression, an old studio trick) and a tilt eq. I used an optical element for the compression, which acts a bit slower than a 1176 fet comp and lets a bit more of the initial dynamics through (and dynamics are where its at, sound wise, all the interest in a note is the attack & initial dynamics, then comes the actual note itself), the dry blend lets you add more if you want.

Turn up the volume to use this as a compressor / sustainer / boost too!

You can run this before your drive pedals to get an even drive character, or run it after your drives, to boost the signal going to your amp.

This is designed to be full range so works equally as well on guitar and bass.

INSTRUCTIONS

There is nothing like an optical compressor for smooth sounding compression. Before modern electronics, all the valve compressors used an optical element to vary the gain. Many modern compressors can sound “unnatural” as their variable gain is linear with signal level. The old optical units had non linearities which added to the warmer sound.

We took our inspiration for this pedal from these old valve compressors, and while using modern electronics, we used an old fashioned optical element for the variable gain stage.

The Mozztronics CO2 optical compressor has become a favourite among bass players and guitarists.

WET is the volume for the compressor / sustainer signal

DRY adds the raw uncompressed signal in with the compressed signal to retain some of the dynamics (this is an old studio trick called parallel compression & we’ve built it into the pedal),

SUSTAIN controls the amount of compression / sustain from barely on to very squishy,

TILT is a tilt eq, clockwise will bring up treble & reduce bass, anticlockwise will bring up bass and reduce treble.

Start with all controls anticlockwise and TILT midway. Bring up the WET control for equal volume between effect on & bypass, then bring SUSTAIN up to the desired level.

You may need to increase the WET control as adding sustain will reduce the volume. Adjust TILT to taste.

Now let’s have some fun, slowly turn DRY up to add in some of the original signal and regain some of the dynamics lost with compression.

Mozztronics want to make their contribution to a greener world by keeping 9V batteries out of landfill. For this reason Mozztronics pedals do NOT have space inside for a 9V battery. If you do not already have a suitable power supply such as a Boss wall-wart, One Spot, PP2 etc