Barber Electronics Tone Press

A remarkable Tonal Breakthrough: How We Did It
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 we 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 just the Barber Electronics Tone Press.

Our 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.