COMPRESSOR OVERVIEW As a compressor, the Bloom features an optical limiting circuit that takes its inspiration from compressors designed during the golden age of vacuum tube circuits. The Bloom is ideal for players who typically don’t use compression but want the ‘mastered’ response that optical compression gives a guitarists tone. The frequency response of the compressor section is flat as a board and does not boost or cut any of your highs or lows. Just like a well designed compressor should, the Bloom alters the dynamics of the guitar signal and not the tone. A good compressor should be felt and not heard! DUAL COMPRESSION – AKA SLIDE MODE When set to compression preset 5 or “Slide Mode” the aux compressor circuit is activated and placed in series ahead of the primary compressor. The tonal result of using two compressors in series is that notes will sustain almost endlessly and oftentimes break out into harmonic feedback while still remaining clear and clean! It ‘feels’ like you have an overdrive pedal on but the tone is still clean with endless sustain! Hidden inside the Bloom, is a auxiliary compressor circuit that is identical to the main compressor circuit however without externally mounted controls. This aux compressor, which is set with a fast attack of 7.5ms, has two trimmers mounted on the right side of the pedal and are accessible when the cover is removed. These trimmers allow you to adjust the COMP and VOLUME settings of the aux compressor when using compression presets 5 and 6. More on compression presets later. CLEAN BLEND When more subtlety is desired from the compression circuit, we have included a BLEND control that allows the player to blend in their clean, unaffected signal back in with the compressed signal. One of the best features of the Blend control is that it allows the player to dial in a really aggressive compression setting and then blend some of their clean signal back in with it. This produces the effect of giving the note a very natural attack while slowly fading in the sustain that comes from running a high compression setting. 3-in-1 dynamic and tonal control pedal Studio-grade optical compressor with 6 preset modes Baxandall-style 3-band EQ section with ±12dB boost/cut per band Transparent boost with press-and-hold ramp-up feature MIDI input for selecting presets and controlling parameters Responsive LED indicator lights change intensity according to gain reduction level Programmable true bypass or buffered bypass operation
