Catalinbread NiCompressor

Catalinbread NiCompressor

The Catalinbread NiCompressor is inspired by the legendary Loco Box ‘The Choker’ Compressor of the 70’s.

The NiCompressor (pronounced “Nigh Compressor”) offers distinctive tone shaping capabilities.

Achieving exceptional compression dynamics while keeping higher frequencies intact. It makes your guitar sound incredibly full and fat, without compromising your tone.

In seeking to honor, improve, and expand this concept, Catalinbread developed a broader range of functionality and finely-tuned controls.

The Bass enhances the lower frequencies and increases sustain when turned up.

The founder’s last pedal

The NiCompressor is the final effect pedal designed by Catalinbread’s founder, Nicholas J. P. Harris.

Finishing his design in early 2016, Nic’s life was tragically cut short on a road trip to the Oregon coast.

Taking Nic’s breadboarded prototype of the effect to a finished product was a labor of love. Developing this effect pedal the way Nic originally intended was our highest priority and goal.

Dedicating many hours to this design, revising our prototype while still keeping the effect true to Nic’s original design, concept and inspiration.

How compression works

To understand what the NiCompressor is doing with your guitar signal, it helps to know a little bit about how compression works.

When your instrument’s signal is quiet, the compressor kicks on and adds a little bit of gain.

When your instrument’s signal is loud, the compressor attenuates the signal so that the dynamics of your playing becomes more uniform.

In this case, soft notes are ringing out as loud as hard-picked notes.

Loud notes are a little quieter as the envelope of your signal is squashed so all notes are roughly set to the same volume. This is really helpful for playing lead runs or switching back and forth from rhythm to lead.

Inshort, compression helps to keep the volume of all notes played roughly at the same level.

And how it sounds…

Not only can compression make the overall dynamics of your playing more uniform, but it can also add sustain.

For example, if you pick a note or strum a chord, the NiCompressor boosts the volume as the guitar signal naturally fades out and prevents the sound from fading out quickly and allowing for long sustained notes.

Compression is a subtle effect because it primarily affects the volume of your guitar signal.

Because of this, compression will be more noticeable to the person playing guitar as it affects the attack and sustain of the notes played. Also, it will be less noticeable to others listening.

In other words, compression will have more of a noticeable effect on the way playing the instrument feels rather than how it audibly changes the sound of the instrument.

The NiCompressor is an “always-on” style compression, so find your sweet spot, leave it and ROCK!

Requires 9V DC centre negative power supply. Draws approx 13ma.

The NiCompressor user manual is on the Catalinbread site.