The Cali76 FET.
Origin Effects’ original Cali76 compressor, launched in 2013, offered something significantly different from the compressor pedals guitar players had previously been accustomed to, such as the highly coloured‑sounding and squashy Ross, DynaComp and Orange Squeezer. There’s nothing inherently wrong with ‘coloured and squashy’ in a guitar pedal, of course, unless you happen to want something cleaner‑sounding and less obvious in its dynamic effects. The all‑analogue Cali76 offered ‘studio quality’ compression with a full control set in a guitar pedal for the first time. Although ‘modelled on’ a 1960s UREI 1176 FET‑based, rackmount compressor, it could actually run on a 9V battery, even if an 18V mains adaptor was preferred, so obviously it didn’t contain the same circuitry as a real 1176. It undoubtedly did, however, offer much of the same exceptionally musical character and quality of sound that we associate with premium studio compressors, including a very low noise floor and wide bandwidth. It had gain‑reduction metering via an LED strip, with customisation options for adding a parallel dry path and/or a transformer‑coupled Class‑A, discrete output amplifier.
Popular and very successful as the original large‑format Cali76 was, it was relatively expensive and demanded a lot of pedalboard space. That led Origin to develop some more compact and affordable versions, the Cali76 Compact and Cali76 Compact Deluxe. In the former, you had just a High/Low switch for the ratio, and a single control used to set both attack and release times (fast attack with slow release or vice versa), whilst the Compact Deluxe kept separate Ratio, Attack and Release knobs as well as offering a Dry level mix for parallel compression. Gain reduction could still be monitored to a limited extent via a colour change in the on/off LED.
Even More Compact
Now we have two more Cali76 versions that are even more compact than the previous Compacts. Designated Cali76 FET Compressor and Cali76 Bass Compressor, these use the new smaller housing employed by Origin’s effects pedal line (64 x 124 x 58mm WDH), but there’s more to them than the smaller box. The least visible but perhaps most significant change is internal operation at 24V, whilst still using a standard 9V DC input (200mA). This means the new pedals have a ton of headroom, permitting operation at line level, and given how clean and quiet it is, you’d have no problem using either of these as a vocal recording compressor on a mixer insert point. They will also be better able to handle the extra hot output of active pickups or from another pedal ahead of it in the signal chain, a high‑level effects loop, or indeed the direct output from any other line‑level source.
The input gain has plenty of range for working with a direct connection from a passive instrument, as well, but I’ve always preferred a ‘character’ compressor like a DynaComp or Squeezer in front of an amp or modeller, with something smooth like an 1176 placed at the end of the signal chain, where it can offer a degree of levelling without significantly changing the tonality.
The two pedals run off a standard external 9V power supply, though internally the processing runs on 24V.Both the new pedals have much of the same line‑up of controls: Input, Output, Dry (adds unprocessed signal to the output) and Ratio. But whilst the FET model has separate Attack and Release controls, the Bass model has the combined Attack/Release combo of the earlier Compact model, plus a high‑pass filter. Turning up the latter to remove some of the bass from the side‑chain (ie. control signal) prevents the higher energy inherent in the low bass notes from driving the whole signal into gain reduction. Although there are some slightly tweaked levels and time constants in the Bass model to help minimise the distortion, the two pedals’ circuitry is substantially the same, differing only in their control access, so you could use the Bass model in all the applications where you might have used the standard FET model. The only ‘compromise’ is not having separate Attack and Release controls.
The ‘combined’ ATT/REL control on the Bass model makes the assumption that if you’re using a fast attack setting, you’ll want a slower release to avoid obvious side‑effects, and if you’ve used a slow attack to allow the leading edge of transients to get through before the compressor hits, you’ll want a fast recovery to get the level back up quickly. But, obviously, that means you can’t have both a fast attack and release at the same time, which is a perfectly valid setting for some sources, albeit one that you have to be careful with on bass signals — one of the major selling points of the original 1176 when it was launched was its ability to offer much faster dynamic response times than previous designs, but that included a release time short enough for the compressor to act within a single cycle of a low frequency, which can cause audible distortion.
Anyone familiar with an actual 1176 will know that they have switched ratio settings, offering 4:1, 8:1, 12:1 and 20:1. The Ratio pot on these pedals is continuous, without any reference markings, but you’ll probably be using your ears and the gain‑reduction metering anyway. There’s no actual Threshold control on an 1176, you just use the input knob to get the amount of gain reduction you want and then set the Output to get the level back to unity or above. In a real 1176, the nominally ‘fixed’ threshold is slightly modified by the ratio selected — the higher the ratio, the higher the threshold — and I’m not sure that’s particularly evident in these, but that actually makes them easier to dial in. I did find there wasn’t a lot of range to play with at the lower end of the input gain pot with line‑level sources, but nothing you can’t deal with by slightly attenuating the source.
Sounds
What do they sound like? Well, they certainly won’t disappoint: if anything, I think they sound a little more like the original, big Cali76 than the various Compact models do. Very clean and smooth. Perhaps not as ‘fat’, but only because they’re so transparent and fast‑sounding, with none of the transient dulling that guitar players are used to with pedal compressors. Of course, this does all rather depend on the source and the settings used, as well.
With the extra headroom, these really are an 1176 in compact pedal form, offering smooth, musical compression, excellent for guitar or bass and indeed a host of other applications, too.
The new enclosure depth will line up better with other pedals, but although these might be smaller they still exhibit Origin’s seriously high‑quality, heavy‑duty build characteristics, so be careful how you mount one of these to a board. It’ll do some damage if it comes loose! With the extra headroom, these really are an 1176 in compact pedal form, offering smooth, musical compression, excellent for guitar or bass and indeed a host of other applications, too.
Cali76 FET Compressor + Bass Compressor: Audio Examples
Click below to download and unpack the hi-res WAV Audio files that accompany this article.
cali76_compressors_sos_audio_examples.zip
All audio examples are with zero dry path added, so you are just hearing the compressor output.
Example 1 - Cali76 FET and Bass Compressors on guitar and bass
The FET comp is on guitar here and the Bass model on bass. The bass track is a DI-ed Precision and I'm going for a '70s smooth LA studio sound. I want it to stay very even, but I don't want to 'hear' the compression, at least, not is the context of the mix — 1176s excel at this. Ratio is 4:1 with about 6dB of gain reduction visible on the LEDs most of the time.
Example 2 - Cali76 Bass Compressor smooth bass isolated
You can hear there's not much of the attack getting through, and the slow recovery time keeps most of the notes at the same level, so the bassline is able to just support the track without needing to be too prominent.
Example 3 - Cali76 FET Compressor guitar isolated
The FET Compressor is patched post-amp (UA Dream 65), with slow attack and slow release (the advantage of having separate controls), the latter being most evident in the sustained note at the beginning that almost appears to swell rather than decay. In a DI-ed situation and subtle compressor can put back some of the feel of playing next to a real amp and speaker. Ratio is 2:1 with gain reduction varying with how hard notes are hit.
Example 4 - Cali76 Bass Compressor Stingray 5 in track
A more aggressive-sounding bass part calls for a slower attack so you hear all the transient, but I've used a steeper ratio 8:1, hitting primarily the peaks. Plenty of Stingray 'growl' gets through but it's not hard to find a level in the mix where the whole part sits just right.
Example 5 - Cali76 Bass Compressor Stingray 5 isolated
Using a slow attack setting means accepting a fast release on the combined attack/release control, so you can hear finger noises and incomplete string damping being pulled up between notes. I've dialled up the very useful side-chain high-pass filter so the super-low note on the low B-string at 0.39s doesn't collapse the whole track!
