Click here to go for the gold with our new CHUCKSCLUSIVE Gold Tone Press from Barber Electronics
Bringing together the very best of classic guitar compression and time-honored recording techniques, the Barber Tone Press is a revolutionary performance compression pedal that has no rival.
Our goal-d for this colorway is to show our appreciation and admiration for Barber Electronics. We know that when you get to play the Tone Press V6 you’ll say “wow” or maybe even “wAuw.” We could give you 79 reasons why this is an awesome circuit, but once you play it, you’ll know. The goldilocks of compressor pedals, your tone will be juuuuuuuust right.
This CHUCKSCLUSIVE colorway is limited and won't last long! Grab it while you can - only at Chuck Levin's!
In research and development, Barber studied the problems associated with classic guitar compressors and their recent clones and found that, while the clone-makers build pedals with improved components (cleaner switching, in particular) and matched transistors, a few of the major drawbacks of those “vintage” designs still exist. The most glaring drawback of popular classic compressors is that they reverse the guitar’s phase and cause a “pop” that squashes the attack at the beginning of every note. Although you now see some compression units that have attack controls, they leave a bit to be desired as they require seemingly endless trial and error tweaking , and still no true solution to gracefully removing the artificial pop when striking the strings.
Parallel compression is the solution. A Barber innovation that is more natural than dealing with attack, ratio and release knobs. Barber developed a unique continuous “blend control” circuit, and combined it with a discrete “Class A” FET mixer circuit to allow you to continuously blend the natural signal of your guitar with a “phase-corrected” classic compression circuit. The result? What guitar players have always wanted, unaltered attack with supernatural sustain and resonance. No studio engineering degree required.
Barber's blend control can give from 100% dry, to 100% compression mix, so you are not limited to only "50/50" (half blend). Some of the best parallel compression sounds are achieved with very high sustain settings and more than 50% dry-blend. There's little point to a parallel compressor than can only take you half way there!
There are 2 additional toggles one for "speed", which adds a new "fast" mode which is perfect for percussive playing without loss of attack. There is also a "Brilliance" toggle which adds a very subtle and polished sheen to the treble frequencies.
- Volume adjusts overall level of the Tone Press
- Blend adjusts the mix of clean and compressed guitar
- Sustain adjusts the level of squash from the compressor
- Subtlety-switches: The left toggle-switch adjusts “speed”. The left setting is “fast”, and flipping the toggle to the right is classic response. The fast setting works best for percussive playing and its effect is less audible as you blend in your clean sound. The Toggle on the right is for brilliance, when the toggle is set to the left you get a normal EQ response, near flat. Flipping the right toggle to the right position gives a slight lift to the highest frequencies to help add a little bounce to the top after compression and can be helpful with darker amps or overwound pickups. Both of these switches are subtle and most audible when paired with guitars and amps that have an articulate reproduction of sound.
