Lightning Boy Audio Launches Opti-Mu Prime — Tube Compressor Pedal

Yours ears will thank your feet for this one.

The future/retro/minimalist inventor-types at Lightning Boy Audio (LBA) have launched the Opti-Mu Prime. A new compressor pedal with some unique design characteristics, the Opti-Mu Prime provides the distinctive qualities of a vari-mu studio compressor in a stomp box format.

Opti-Mu Prime puts a different type of compression at your toetips.

According to LBA, Opti-Mu compression uses a vacuum tube-powered optical vari-mu circuit to automatically manipulate the bias of a preamp tube. Playing louder causes the bias of the preamp to drops momentarily, and create a quieter and cleaner sound. The result is that it creates a balance of volume between a player’s loud and soft notes, but in a way that extremely sonically transparent.

Available exclusively via the Lightning Boy Audio website, Opti-Mu Prime carries a pre-release price of $299.00 now through July 13th.

Now listen in on the complete specs of this special pedal, as supplied by LBA:

Opti-Mu Prime pushes the limits of natural sounding compression by employing a unique circuit designed by Lightning Boy Audio. A pair of 12AU7 tubes power Opti-Mu Prime.  One tube drives the optically controlled vari-mu circuit, which constantly readjusts the plate voltage of the preamp tube, based on how loud the instrument is being played.  The second serves as a preamp, and is the only tube in the audio path.

This is the only pedal on the market that employs actual vacuum tubes to achieve the compression effect. There are some vacuum tube powered compressor pedals, but they are optical compressors, which use vacuum tubes simply for makeup gain. Many Mastering Engineers prefer to use vari-mu compression for it’s transparent and organic sound quality.

As with all Lightning Boy gear, paper in oil caps are utilized for their ultra-transparent sound and smooth tone. Like all of our other builds, the Opti-Mu Prime is hand wired point to point with silver plated Teflon insulated wire. To prevent any unnecessary resistor noise, all Lightning Boy equipment is made with low noise Vishay/Dale metalized film resistors.

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