Reckless diode compressor

Diode bridges are an old-school way to build a compressor's gain element, with a warm character to the tone. This is an original design around one.

The circuit. A diode-bridge gain cell controlled by a feed-forward side-chain with a precision peak detector. The feed-forward topology gives it the dynamics of a studio compressor rather than a pedal limiter: warm and characterful when pushed, very transparent when set gently.

It runs from a single 9 V supply, like any other pedal. The two-layer PCB carries a ground plane on its top copper and fits a 1590BB enclosure.