The Gorila is a professional bass compressor. With its optical technology and studio-grade opamp, it was designed to bring recording studio quality to the pedal format.
Equiped with parallel compression capabilities and an extra limiter stage, you can shape the sound of your bass to perfection. Be it on stage, in the studio, with an amplifier or direct to the PA, the Gorila is all you need for precise and powerful control of your bass.
Optical compression
Limiter w/threshold control
Studio-grade operational amplifier
Compression indicator led
"TILT" equalizer
Minimum noise level
True bypass
EQ Tilt-type Equalizer: This equalizer works as a balance of high versus low frequencies, centered at 250hz. With the control in the middle, the EQ is flat. The Eq is applied on the already compressed signal
GAIN Recovery gain on the compressed signal, to match the level with respect to bypass. In the minimum position the gain is unity.
COMP Compressor threshold: signal level from which the compressor operates and begins to reduce the gain. In practice, it controls the amount of leveling applied, as it determines how much sound is affected to the compressor.
BLEND Level of the original clean signal, which is summed in parallel to the compressed and equalized sound. This can be used to simply soften the compression by effectively reducing the ratio, to restore transients affected by the compressor, or combined with the Eq to achieve selective compression of bass or treble frequencies.
ATTACK Attack time of the envelope detector. Controls the reaction time of the compressor. A slower attack time lets more of the transient (the initial peak of each note) pass thru. This control affects only wide sound variations, typically the beginnings of each note, thanks to the Adaptive Attack circuitry: slowly varying sounds are compressed with a slow, fixed attack time, achieving effective but much more transparent compression.
LIMIT -side control- Threshold of the soft-clipping Limiter. Turning it counterclockwise lowers the threshold, effectively cutting off the signal portions that exceed it. In a normal setting, transparent control of the peaks is achieved, and as the threshold is lowered, more of the sound is affected, generating a compacted audio and increasing its saturation.
TRUE BYPASS Turns the effect on and off. The True Bypass switch allows you to keep your sound intact when the effect is off.
Compression indicator LED. Lights when the compressor is effectively reducing gain. Normal settings are achieved when this LED briefly lits at the peaks of each note. If it is constantly lit, it represents a high level of compression to the entire sound.
Optical compression is Gorila's core technology, inherited from classic studio compressors such as the LA-2A, and commonly used to level sound in a natural, non-intrusive way. Its envelope detector is specifically equalized for electric bass and low-frequency instruments, and is applied on an optocoupler element designed by us, which takes care of the volume leveling. It's great for balancing the sound and also delivering that signature "thump" heard on countless records. The GOR4 incorporates a new limiter stage that exerts full control over signal peaks, sometimes generated by the instrument or as a result of intense compression. This circuit is a soft-clipping limiter, and thanks to the variable clipping threshold, it can range from smoothing out the highest peaks to completely squashing the signal. It even lets you get a hint of harmonics that are ideal for making the bass cut in the mix. The BLEND control adds some of the uncompressed sound, allowing you to do something common in studios which is parallel compression. By combining clean and processed sound in different proportions, it is possible to achieve maximum transparency without losing the leveling action. On the Gorila, the blend is done after the TILT EQ, so sideband compression can also be performed, equalizing the compressed signal towards the bass or treble and adding the desired amount of dry signal.
