• TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
    Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
    Join free Log in
    Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.

Sneak preview: new FEA opti-FET compressor!

#41
warwick.hoy said:
Don't know if you'll catch this RS,...but I bought the one bongo reviewed,....and it's everything he says it is.

I'm a relative comp newb but this is an excellent piece of gear. This was my experience as best as I can describe it. I took it to a rehearsal with a medium loud band and just went Bass (Thumb) -->OptiFET-->GK MB2-500-->Cab. The OptiFET really open up my playing. Even when digging in I was able to push the gain and not clip my amp. I definitely rolled the harshness out of my highs and fattened up the bottom. It also seemed to really help my amp do it's thing more efficiently. I attribute the sidechain EQ for easing the boominess of a typically boomy (not in a good way) setup and helping increase the efficiency of the amp and cab.

I will echo bongo's noise issue,...this of course being the same pedal he reviewed I expected this. I would suggest using a quality power supply with isolated outputs,...or use a battery. I used a battery at rehearsal tonight and OptiFET was dead silent.
Click to expand...

Hey Warwick - I hadn't subscribed to this thread but stumbled across it again looking for something else!

Very cool that this pedal is so good - my current project has little need for fx so I am sticking to all rack gear for the time being. (why use a pedal board if you don't have to) Should that change however I will look to get one of these.

Thanks for the update!
 
#43
After debate, I decided to bounce this older thread to the top instead of starting another. There's already some good stuff here.

I have been experimenting with my new FEA Opti-FET, and I must say that I am VERY impressed with this compressor. It is a wonderful piece of equipment.

I am pretty picky about compressors. I want a lot of flexibility in the settings, but I also want them to be pretty transparent tonally. There are plenty that offer one or the other but few that offer both -- especially in a stomp box design.

For the past several months, I have been using a Markbass Compressore. I have to say that it is an excellent unit. I love functionality of the controls, and while it does have a SLIGHT tendency to warm and darken the tone a bit, for the most part it is pretty unobtrusive even at fairly heavy compression levels. If not for the fact that the power demands are unusually high (500 mA minimum @ 12V+ DC) and it is quite large on a pedal board, I would play it long term and be happy.

So, in looking for a smaller, 9V+ solution, Bongo's reviews led me to this. I have to generally agree with his assessment. The unit does sound a great deal like the MB, although it may been even a touch darker and tends to "thicken" the sound a bit more than the MB. Like the Compressore, or perhaps even more so, the FEA allows you to compress the signal a great deal before you start getting unpleasant compression artifacts. I couldn't be happier with the tone and function of this compressor.

It is built to AMAZINGLY high standards. I power my board with a Voodoo Labs PP2+ and have no noise issues whatsoever. The compressor is mouse quiet like the Markbass.

If that was where it stopped, I would be happy with the unit. I gave up nothing in tone and got the size and power convenience that I wanted. But, I also got the side chain functionality.

I will likely never use the loop, but I have to say the 3-band EQ is the side chain is absolutely BRILLIANCE!!! I have never been a great slap player and don't need the technique often, but this side-chain EQ function allows me to dial up a better, more controllable slap tone in 5 seconds than I ever have. The bass stays present and the pops are bright without being overpowering dynamically. It's just awesome. Same goes for pick playing. The side chain manages the transient treble spikes from slapping or picking without squashing the tone too much.

It's not a low-budget item, but I just can't imagine a better tool for a top-end pedal board. I love it.
 
#45
I thought I'd pop on here with a new conclusion (a good one).

After much himin and hawin about having to have this comp on a good isolated power supply,...I finally said eff it and put in a daisy chain running from a 200 mA PSA knock off (A Dano I got from Superfunk a long time ago as part of a trade).

The daisy chain was also powering a BOSS FS-6 and an OHNOHO Utter Stutter Feedback loop. The result,...dead silent. I've been running Bass-->Utter Stutter (with my entire signal chain through the feedback loop)-->OptiFET-->"Amp" (just a cheep crappy setup so I can wear my headphones and try to pick up on the nuances). This seems like the most logical place to put it.

If I weren't so happy with how my setup is at the moment,..I'd tear my boards down and experiment with it's placement. I may put the comp in the actual feedback loop just to see if it does anything unexpected.

Having set it aside for a few months and coming back to it refreshed,...it really is a lovely piece of gear. It sounds great, it works well, it's solid, and it's elegant.
 
#46
Another TB'er mentioned to me that Frank was going to "pause" production on these for a short while, just to iron out the "circumstantial noise" I mentioned in my review. For all I know, this may be one of those cases where I'm the only person to have the problem anyway--it seems to happen a lot with me. :p
 
#47
Hey Bongo, you weren’t the only one who has discovered the noise issue, but you were the first. ;) There have been enough noise occurrences that I spent all of last week trying to locate the noise issues. With the very detailed descriptions that I received of pedal and power supply configurations, I was finally able to recreate the noise that some have seen. Unfortunately, I can not modify the existing circuit to remedy the problem and I have pulled all of the Opti-FETs from their production build.

So, I plan on redesigning the audio circuits with three goals in mind…. The first goal is to model the noise rejection that is in the Dual-Band compressors audio path with an additional layer of protection. This will eliminate the potential for noise issues that the Opti-FET has now.

The second goal is to give the output audio amp a switch for a selectable “warm” or “transparent” character. There seems to be two different camps for what people look for in a compressor “sound”. Some like the warm tone from vintage compressors and the other camp wants the tone to be transparent and clean. I hope that the new amplifier design will satisfy both camps.

Finally, the third goal is to have a bit more make-up gain and to keep the output “Class A” FET amplifier. Otherwise, I would have to give the pedal a new name.:D

-Frank
 
#52
I received my OptiFET about a week ago. Wow. Really great sounding comp. However, I haven't had much time to fiddle with the sidechain yet.

There does seem to be some misunderstanding as to what the sidechain is useful for. In particular the idea that one could trigger compression from a bass drum mic to 'tighten up' the bass and bass drum interplay (think Steely Dan Hey Nineteen, though I don't know for sure if they used this technique on the song - sure is tight though!).

A compressor is an automatic volume control that turns the volume DOWN when triggered. If you trigger from the bass drum, your bass volume will be lowered when the bass drum hits; that will not sound tight it will sound wimpy. Conversely, if you happen to hit a note when the bass drum is not playing, that note will be louder than your other notes.

For this application what you need is a gate / expander, not a compressor, with sidechain input to trigger the gate opening on the bass when the bass drum hits.

The most common use for compressor sidechain is for controlling sibilance on vocalists. In that application, a parametric EQ is used in the sidechain to emphasize the frequency where the particular vocalist has sibilance, triggering more drastic compression and reducing the level of the sibilant notes.

This works on voice because it's a monophonic instrument. If you were to trigger very frequency specific compression on bass; let's say you have a 'wolf tone' at F# on the D string and use a parametric in the sidechain to squash it: that same F# on the A string may not have the same problem but it would get overly compressed because it's the same frequency as the wolf tone. Keep in mind that you already have a compressor to help even out the response of the instrument, and those wolf tones will get compressed more because they are louder and dead spots will get compressed less or not at all because they are softer - no need for extra sidechain processing.

I think that on bass the sidechain would be most useful for emphasis or de-emphasis of a broad frequency range; for example cutting the bass in the sidechain would cause compression to be less drastic on low notes. I need to do some experimenting, but have a feeling that the 3-band EQ provided on the OptiFET will be sufficient for my needs.

Definitely a cool feature but not at all the reason I bought the OptiFET; if they offered a smaller version of the pedal without sidechain, for less money, I would have preferred it. There's my request to FEA: make an OptiFET in a smaller box, one footswitch, no sidechain, and add a real gain reduction meter (like MXR put on their new comp), priced under $200....
 
#53
I just got my limited-run moded FEA Labs Opti-Fet this weekend. I'm really pleased with this pedal. I had NONE of the noise complaints of the previous build, and I powered it with a OneSpot. The sidechain EQ section gives some wide options as to how you want it to sound. It sounds CRYSTAL clear at anysetting, smooth and is really quiet, even at pretty high levels of compression. And as ChasArms said "It allows you to compress the signal a great deal before you start getting unpleasant compression artifacts." Every set break, I tried something new with it....and it exceded my expectations in everything I tried. There are dip switches inside the pedal that give you some options as well, including 2 settings to make it sound cleaner or warmer. There is also a 3rd switch that engages a rolloff at 12k for a more vintage tone. It has plenty of makeup gain, and gives consistant tone and compression effects from turning the gain knob all the way down to all the way up.

I did a recording to protools on the gig, going into a digidesign SC48 and straight firewire to protools, and my tone was great. I ran the compressor as an overall and my only effect in the chain (Bass-OptiFet-DI), and the recording was nice, even, and crisp while not sounding overly compressed (mainly because of the EQ section). It took me a second to wrap my head around the concept of feeding the compressor LESS low end to obtain a beefier sound, while maintaining what the upper frequencies were doing, but once understood, I could somewhat control what the compressor sounded like from my bass controls. My only suggestion for improvement is to move the dip switches to the front face in the form of a toggle.

It didn't take me too long to find happiness with this pedal, and I very highly recommend it to anyone looking for an extremely versatile compressor that can go everywhere from light transparent compression, to giving you a new approach to playing. It's a bit pricey, but worth it. For the amount of control options it presents, its size is more than acceptable, and I was actually able to do without my SansAmp Para-Driver (which I use to warm the tone with the mixable drive and accentuate the mids a tiny bit), because of the use of the "warm" dip switches and the eq/loop section....so it SAVED me space! haha.. Great job Frank.
 
  • Like
Reactions: chaak
#54
cavemanbass said:
I received my OptiFET about a week ago. Wow. Really great sounding comp.
Click to expand...

Thank you!:)

cavemanbass said:
There does seem to be some misunderstanding as to what the sidechain is useful for. In particular the idea that one could trigger compression from a bass drum mic to 'tighten up' the bass and bass drum interplay (think Steely Dan Hey Nineteen, though I don't know for sure if they used this technique on the song - sure is tight though!).

A compressor is an automatic volume control that turns the volume DOWN when triggered. If you trigger from the bass drum, your bass volume will be lowered when the bass drum hits; that will not sound tight it will sound wimpy. Conversely, if you happen to hit a note when the bass drum is not playing, that note will be louder than your other notes.

For this application what you need is a gate / expander, not a compressor, with sidechain input to trigger the gate opening on the bass when the bass drum hits.
Click to expand...

I remember a conversation that I had with a recording engineer years ago about this subject. He told me that there are a few common methods to tighten up the bass and kick drums competing for the same sonic space. One is to EQ the kick drum and bass to carve out space for each other by cutting frequencies from one and boosting those same frequencies for the other. Another method is to duck (attenuate) the bass with the kick. Then you can also use the EQ and ducking method together. It all depended on the tracks that he was working with and what worked best for the music. I distinctly remember that he kept referring to these methods as “tightening up the bass and kick”. I just did a quick search and found numerous references to triggering the bass compression with the kick as ‘tightening’ just to be sure that he wasn’t a rogue engineer and that my statements in previous posts were correct.

Extreme ducking is often used in modern dance music as an effect where an instrument or track is essentially removed with every kick beat. Although the use of an expander/gate can also sync the bass and kick, it will have the opposite effect of ducking… the bottom end would explode on every kick beat. I am not saying that this is undesirable and it can also be very useful, especially with some techno dance music. But I have replaced enough speakers in my cabs to know that I would never want to try this with any of my bass rigs.

The thing to keep in mind is that when an instrument or track is triggered by another there is a perceived synchronization of timing. This synchronized timing, regardless of compression or expansion, is commonly referred to as ‘tightening’.:)

I did design a circuit several years ago that ducked the low bass frequencies while expanding the higher frequency harmonics with a kick drum trigger. I saw this as very narrow niche product, so it has been shelved for the time being. Maybe I should revisit that design and call it the “Drunk Bass Buddy”.:D

If only an external trigger is used on the Opti-FET it will act as an extreme ducking compressor. It does this because it uses a feedback reference of the compressed signal to control the compression, and without this feedback signal the compressor will only operate as a reverse gate. To have control over the amount of compression with an external trigger, the signal from the loop send needs to be mixed together with the trigger signal before feeding the compressors loop return. This method allows for the use of ‘normal’ compression with the additional ‘triggered’ compression controlled with the external trigger signal level.


cavemanbass said:
The most common use for compressor sidechain is for controlling sibilance on vocalists. In that application, a parametric EQ is used in the sidechain to emphasize the frequency where the particular vocalist has sibilance, triggering more drastic compression and reducing the level of the sibilant notes.

This works on voice because it's a monophonic instrument. If you were to trigger very frequency specific compression on bass; let's say you have a 'wolf tone' at F# on the D string and use a parametric in the sidechain to squash it: that same F# on the A string may not have the same problem but it would get overly compressed because it's the same frequency as the wolf tone. Keep in mind that you already have a compressor to help even out the response of the instrument, and those wolf tones will get compressed more because they are louder and dead spots will get compressed less or not at all because they are softer - no need for extra sidechain processing.
Click to expand...

True, if you are using a high ratio and have the threshold set low so that the compressor is constantly triggered. If you are not using a high ratio and have a problematic resonant frequency, an EQ narrowly focused on that frequency in the sidechain will allow you to control it better… basically trading the high ratio for a frequency specific threshold. You are right that those same notes on the other strings will be somewhat affected as you have stated. But that same note on the other strings will not have the amplitude issues of the problem note, so they will not drive the detector as hard and will be less affected. The opposite applies to dead spots. Your sibilance example is perfect for describing this particular use of sidechain EQ. Every note from an instrument or vocal is made up of many frequencies and the problem frequencies in sibilance will be present throughout the vocals of a song. If sidechain EQ is used to correct sibilance, then by applying your example with the bass, the vocals that have the same frequencies as the sibilance would also suffer. I admit that the common notes on the bass can be affected to a greater degree, but it all boils down to finding the compromise that works best for you.

-Frank
 
  • Like
Reactions: superheavyfunk
#55
Hoffman6000 said:
I just got my limited-run moded FEA Labs Opti-Fet this weekend. I'm really pleased with this pedal. I had NONE of the noise complaints of the previous build, and I powered it with a OneSpot. The sidechain EQ section gives some wide options as to how you want it to sound. It sounds CRYSTAL clear at anysetting, smooth and is really quiet, even at pretty high levels of compression. And as ChasArms said "It allows you to compress the signal a great deal before you start getting unpleasant compression artifacts." Every set break, I tried something new with it....and it exceded my expectations in everything I tried. There are dip switches inside the pedal that give you some options as well, including 2 settings to make it sound cleaner or warmer. There is also a 3rd switch that engages a rolloff at 12k for a more vintage tone. It has plenty of makeup gain, and gives consistant tone and compression effects from turning the gain knob all the way down to all the way up.

I did a recording to protools on the gig, going into a digidesign SC48 and straight firewire to protools, and my tone was great. I ran the compressor as an overall and my only effect in the chain (Bass-OptiFet-DI), and the recording was nice, even, and crisp while not sounding overly compressed (mainly because of the EQ section). It took me a second to wrap my head around the concept of feeding the compressor LESS low end to obtain a beefier sound, while maintaining what the upper frequencies were doing, but once understood, I could somewhat control what the compressor sounded like from my bass controls. My only suggestion for improvement is to move the dip switches to the front face in the form of a toggle.

It didn't take me too long to find happiness with this pedal, and I very highly recommend it to anyone looking for an extremely versatile compressor that can go everywhere from light transparent compression, to giving you a new approach to playing. It's a bit pricey, but worth it. For the amount of control options it presents, its size is more than acceptable, and I was actually able to do without my SansAmp Para-Driver (which I use to warm the tone with the mixable drive and accentuate the mids a tiny bit), because of the use of the "warm" dip switches and the eq/loop section....so it SAVED me space! haha.. Great job Frank.
Click to expand...

Thank you very much for the review!
-Frank
 
  • Like
Reactions: Hoffman6000
#56
Hi all,

I recently received one of the upgraded OptiFETs recently, having bought one on the strength of reviews on TB and Bongo's site.

Rather than restating all that's already been said in this post, I'd have to say this is easily the best compressor I've used in 25+ years of playing and professional work. This is not some glib statement either, having owned and played around 30 different units previously.

Its first real 'trial' on a jazz/funk gig helped my '70s J bass cut through beautifully while retaining the characteristic fender sound, and not once did it make my sound squashed, thin or sterile. Each control was extremely responsive and I was able to easily dial up the exact sound I wanted. A quick change of bass to a Stingray 5, a bit of twiddling and the exact same response.

The chain I was running was J bass/Stingray - Sadowsky pre (off when using the MM) - 3Leaf GR2 envelope filter - OptiFET - EBS Dynaverb - Promethean combo. The OptiFET is also the first comp pedal I've ever used that evened out the sound of an envelope filter, and (occasional) use of reverb after the comp pedal sounded clear across the full frequency range.

I'll also be testing it out in a few days on a fretless gig and expect that, with a little bit more tweaking, it will perform just as brilliantly.

I haven't yet tried the sidechain function and am not likely to have an immediate need for it, however the quality of the compression using the standard functions is enough to make me very happy indeed and to loudly sing its praises!

I'd highly recommend one of these to anyone after a top-quality studio grade compressor and my compliments to Frank at FEA for developing such a wondeful product that seems perfect for bass. A definite keeper and definitely worth the price tag.
 
#60
Megazap63 said:
Hi all,

I recently received one of the upgraded OptiFETs recently, having bought one on the strength of reviews on TB and Bongo's site.

Rather than restating all that's already been said in this post, I'd have to say this is easily the best compressor I've used in 25+ years of playing and professional work. This is not some glib statement either, having owned and played around 30 different units previously.

Its first real 'trial' on a jazz/funk gig helped my '70s J bass cut through beautifully while retaining the characteristic fender sound, and not once did it make my sound squashed, thin or sterile. Each control was extremely responsive and I was able to easily dial up the exact sound I wanted. A quick change of bass to a Stingray 5, a bit of twiddling and the exact same response.

The chain I was running was J bass/Stingray - Sadowsky pre (off when using the MM) - 3Leaf GR2 envelope filter - OptiFET - EBS Dynaverb - Promethean combo. The OptiFET is also the first comp pedal I've ever used that evened out the sound of an envelope filter, and (occasional) use of reverb after the comp pedal sounded clear across the full frequency range.

I'll also be testing it out in a few days on a fretless gig and expect that, with a little bit more tweaking, it will perform just as brilliantly.

I haven't yet tried the sidechain function and am not likely to have an immediate need for it, however the quality of the compression using the standard functions is enough to make me very happy indeed and to loudly sing its praises!

I'd highly recommend one of these to anyone after a top-quality studio grade compressor and my compliments to Frank at FEA for developing such a wondeful product that seems perfect for bass. A definite keeper and definitely worth the price tag.
Click to expand...


Thank you for that nice review!

P Daddy Jones said:
Sign me up. Where do I get one
Click to expand...

cybersnyder said:
Contact Frank at FEA and he'll put you on the wait list. The Opti-FET is currently out of stock (unless that changed over the weekend).
Click to expand...

My parts supplier for the Toshiba transistors that are used in the DBD and Opti-FET has pushed their expected delivery dates to the end of July (due to production delays).

-Frank
 

Latest posts

Top Bottom
Back