Another day, another compressor layout... This is a Dan Coggins design, the Dinosaural OCT-201 Opticompressor, and the predecessor to the Thorpy Fat General, which was also designed by Dan.
Not many of these are around, as it was only made in a short run.
Schematic and tracing journal on Aion FX.
The Dinosaural OPA-101 Overdirven preamp is a variation (or improvement) on the Dinosaural Tube Bender.
This is has the tone control like the the Aion FX version, but I did leave the output stage as a buffer as per the original. The filter itself is on the original which you can see on the schematic / tracing journal. Well worth a read as there's a lot of really useful background information on this pedal.
There's also the option to run this true, or buffered bypass. Personally I'd run buffered, but that's just me.
The Dinosaural Tube Bender from Dan Coggins of Lovetone fame, who now designs for Thorpy FX. The Thorpy Fat General compressor is actually a Dinosaural OTC-201 Opticompressor. You can read up on that here.
This is the most recent trace from Aion Electronics. Aion do a pretty good job of tracing to say the least, so I expect it to be accurate.
This is different to the magazine version schematic, which has the same topology but with some different values. I built one based on the magazine version a while back, and binned it pretty quickly - couldn't work out what the fuss was about, as it was rather disappointing.
I've built and tested this version, and it's nice little overdrive. Runs from very clean, right through to a heavy drive, with a some very usable tones along the way.
The Aion Electronics includes a tone switch mod for more variety, and a bit more power filtering and protection. I'd recommend building the Aion version, as you get more flexibility for limited additional cost and effort.
