All-About the Vintage MXR Script Logo Dyna Comp - Ask Zac 68

well hello friends and welcome to
0:57
another Ask Zac today we
0:59
are going to talk about the grandpa the
1:02
mack daddy
1:03
the you know original pedal compressor
1:06
the script logo dynacomp so we're going
1:08
to talk a bit about its history
1:11
the players how it's been used through
1:13
the years which is interesting because
1:15
it wasn't always this kind of always
1:17
on box it was used literally as an
1:20
effect
1:21
uh earlier on and yeah and just my take
1:24
on it
1:25
and how much uh compressors have kind of
1:28
changed through the years and I'm gonna
1:29
kind of at the end I'll give you my my
1:31
take on the script logo dynacomp
1:34
all right so while we're thinking about
1:36
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to the dynacop
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all right so here she is and
2:17
the the dynacop was the first you know
2:20
pedal compressor and it came out in 1972
2:23
a little bit after that came the the
2:25
orange squeezer by dan
2:27
Armstrong which also had its own you
2:30
know kind of
2:30
fans but uh as Steve Gibson who he will
2:35
all mention him
2:36
more throughout the episode Steve Gibson
2:38
uh
2:39
one of the great Nashville session
2:41
guitar players and the musical director
2:43
for the grand ole opry for many years
2:45
and also the musical director for many
2:47
of the award shows like the cmas and
2:49
such that that you've seen through the
2:51
years and
2:52
worked from worked with everyone from
2:54
George Harrison to Ricky Skaggs and
2:56
Vince gill and everyone in between an
2:58
amazing guitar player an amazing guy and
3:00
who's really had
3:02
he's produced a lot of records and so he
3:03
really you know kind of had the uh
3:06
uh he really knew what was going on the
3:08
whole time because he's he's been here
3:10
you know at least since the early 70s
3:12
so he told me that the dynacomp had a
3:15
kind of had a leg up in Nashville over
3:17
the orange squeezer because
3:19
the orange squeezer plugged directly
3:22
into the guitar
3:24
and you know the recessed jack on a
3:26
telecaster
3:27
makes it it's you can't plug it in
3:29
properly
3:30
also on a strap the same thing now what
3:32
some guys did like martin aufler and
3:34
Ry Cooder
3:35
was they took their strat you know the
3:36
little uh oval shaped output jack and
3:39
they actually flipped it around
3:41
where it was inside out so
3:44
anyway but the the dynacop became kind
3:46
of the uh
3:48
yes the nashville compressor as uh mxr
3:51
you know jim dunlop puts in their uh
3:53
marketing uh spiel so
3:56
yeah it uh you know it was developed by
3:59
uh
4:00
by keith barr and uh richard
4:03
nitro and they uh you know they were
4:06
wanting a compact
4:08
uh you know pedal you know compressor
4:12
and it was all designed around this vca
4:16
or voltage controlled amplifier called a
4:19
ca
4:20
3080 and so they liked the attack of it
4:24
and they liked the feel of it and they
4:26
but they
4:28
but it had noise issues and they just
4:30
kind of overlooked the noise
4:32
because they really liked the feel of it
4:34
and the attack of it
4:35
so they went with that the original
4:39
uh 3080s look like a little
4:42
tin can okay and so if you see a board
4:46
you'll see you know it's it's this you
4:49
know little
4:50
you know silver tin can looking thing
4:52
that's on there in the in
4:53
the middle upper part of the circuit
4:56
board
4:57
and then and that's that's the way you
5:00
know the
5:01
that's kind of how the pedal was from
5:03
its inception in 1972
5:06
and it changed in around 77 when they
5:09
went to the block
5:10
logo and again there's always overlap
5:12
but
5:13
by the by the time the block logo came
5:15
along they had switched to using
5:17
a 3080 that was like a normal ic
5:21
and it looks of course like a black
5:23
rectangle with a bunch of legs on it
5:25
like a spider you know
5:26
what you would think of as an ic but uh
5:30
i'll just tell you right now there's
5:31
something about the old
5:33
ics and the little tin can and you can
5:35
call it voodoo or whatever but
5:38
they they have a they have a certain
5:41
thing to them
5:43
all right uh kind of getting more into
5:45
the history of them
5:46
the earliest ones are really lightweight
5:50
the earliest script logo dynacops and
5:52
that's because they have an aluminum
5:54
housing
5:54
or and they're kind of they're usually
5:56
called bud boxes
5:58
that's because if you open up the
5:59
housing you'll see a uh
6:01
a bud stamp and that was just the
6:03
company that made the housing
6:05
so it was made by bud and then they
6:07
moved on by
6:08
let's see around 74 or so to using a
6:12
zinc housing and that housing of course
6:14
is
6:15
much heavier and so you know when if
6:18
you're looking if you have you know the
6:19
luxury of looking at a bunch of script
6:21
logo dynacomps
6:22
then the earlier ones will be lighter
6:24
and the
6:25
heavier ones are the the later arrow
6:27
ones and they stayed in the
6:30
the zinc housing with the script logo
6:33
till 77 and then of course you get the
6:35
change to block logo
6:38
and uh yeah and then of course it went
6:40
to block logo
6:42
then you have uh you know mxr
6:45
started getting beat up by
6:48
boss and ibanez and they ended up you
6:51
know they started art
6:53
which was you know making rack effects
6:55
and they had some success with that and
6:57
they ended up
6:58
selling off mxr eventually to jim dunlop
7:02
who currently owns the trademark and
7:04
designs
7:05
and art went to yorkville up in canada
7:09
yeah so
7:12
pretty early on
7:15
it was you know it's funny how
7:19
the the mindset about compressors has
7:22
changed
7:23
for a lot of guys in nashville and
7:26
outside of nashville too the compressor
7:28
isn't always on
7:30
effect you know it's something that's
7:32
just left on and it's used to
7:34
smooth out their signal well that wasn't
7:37
always the case and again this is thanks
7:39
to steve gibson who
7:40
who let me in on this and that's you
7:42
know the session players in nashville
7:44
if they wanted compression just leveling
7:47
if they just want to smooth out their
7:48
signal
7:49
well they would ask the engineer or the
7:51
engineer would use an la2a or some
7:54
nice compressor and that's how they
7:55
would smooth it out also
7:57
nashville guitar players didn't have
7:59
pedal boards back in the 70s
8:01
so they had these boxes that they would
8:03
keep in a bag or a briefcase and they
8:04
would just pull them out
8:06
as needed and so the dynacomp
8:10
was something that yes everybody had and
8:12
it was used
8:13
but it was only used for certain things
8:16
so
8:17
let's say you wanted a guitar part to
8:20
have more sustain and to stick out
8:23
well then that would be you know and be
8:25
kind of exaggerated well
8:26
they would use a dynacomp for that and
8:28
they would use it for that you know part
8:30
and then they would take it out they'd
8:31
unplug it
8:32
so it really was an effect and so
8:36
the intro piece that i played which is
8:38
merle haggard's footlights
8:40
and then of course the amazing part was
8:43
played by uh
8:44
reggie young of course one of my big
8:46
heroes
8:47
uh he uh he used a dynacomp i think he
8:51
used a strat on it it sounds a little
8:53
clucky
8:53
on there it sounds like it could be
8:54
either the front two or back two pickups
8:56
on his
8:57
old uh you know sunburst 50s telly that
9:00
he that he played on a ton of sessions
9:03
but uh it's a it's a neat part and you
9:05
can tell i mean it's it's heavily
9:06
compressed and you have this kind of
9:08
thing
9:16
and and that's the way compressors
9:19
compressor pedals were kind of used it
9:21
was used when you wanted a guitar part
9:24
a clean sound to stick out have more
9:27
sustain
9:28
and again it was an effect it was not
9:31
just something that was left on all the
9:33
time that's something that happened
9:34
later
9:37
now to take an example of that that's
9:39
not country you know so i don't
9:40
completely pigeonhole myself i know i'm
9:42
a telly guy and
9:43
live in nashville and playing a deluxe
9:45
reverb with a dynacomp
9:48
now here's a part that sounds like they
9:52
were using compression
9:53
as an effect and this was played by mike
9:56
rutherford
9:57
on the genesis tune um that's all
10:01
so you know the the songs in in g e
10:03
minor
10:04
kind of keeps shifting back and forth
10:06
which of course e minor is the
10:08
the relative minor of g major and you
10:10
have you know this kind of thing yeah
10:25
again it's being used as an effect
10:26
because that was a pop song in 1983
10:29
and they're playing this clean guitar
10:31
part and if you didn't have the
10:32
compression on there
10:34
well then you would have had to use
10:35
overdrive or heavy course or something
10:37
else to try to help make that part
10:39
really pop out and evidently they wanted
10:42
to play it clean
10:43
and so they used heavy compression
10:46
yeah so i think that's uh really
10:48
illuminating again
10:49
because the mindset in today's age is
10:53
that a compressor is kind of an
10:54
always-on
10:55
effect and i guess in some ways that's
10:57
using it like a
10:59
like a studio would with just a light
11:01
amount of compression
11:02
so yeah so that's how it kind of came
11:05
along and of course the dynacomp had a
11:07
huge following and of course it was it
11:09
was kind of the the only game in town
11:11
again besides the orange squeezer which
11:13
had limitations
11:15
uh i will say one other thing about the
11:16
orange squeezer a lot of 335 guys played
11:19
the orange squeezer because it was so
11:21
easy to plug in
11:22
on the top mounted jack so jay graydon
11:26
used one with steely dan you know like
11:28
on peg
11:29
lee written our in fact has this mark a
11:32
circular mark
11:33
where the orange squeezer kind of
11:35
rotated on his guitar and his
11:36
red 335 and put a big mark on it
11:40
uh yeah even uh you know mark noffler is
11:43
supposed to have used a uh
11:45
a uh an orange squeezer on some of the
11:47
early stuff and it certainly sounds like
11:48
there's
11:49
heavy compression on there yeah so
11:52
but the the dynacomp you know of course
11:54
had a bigger following because it was
11:56
you know easier to use didn't have to
11:58
plug it onto the guitar
11:59
so there's all sorts of footage of pete
12:01
townsend using one where you can see it
12:03
where it's his only effect on stage and
12:05
he's turning it off and on
12:06
lowell george used two of them in series
12:10
which is just
12:11
crazy but of course he got a fantastic
12:13
clean
12:14
slide tone with a lot of sustain of
12:17
course david gilmour
12:19
bonnie rate used one off the 70s and she
12:21
switched to a boss compressor later on
12:23
uh jerry reed was one of the big fans
12:25
and proponents
12:26
of the uh you know the dynacomp and so
12:28
you can hear it like on eastbound and
12:30
down
12:31
and other you know jerry reed tunes
12:32
where he's playing electric guitar you
12:34
can really hear the dynacop
12:36
squashing of course my hero reg young
12:39
used it as an effect and sometimes as a
12:41
smoothing device
12:42
you know on uh on recordings uh andy
12:46
summers with the police use the
12:47
dynacomp uh you know even you know the
12:50
edge used one quite a bit
12:52
and then uh even george harrison uh when
12:55
he toured japan that kind of last
12:57
tour that he did with clapton's band he
12:59
had a uh a dynacomp
13:01
and uh yeah so it's a it's a great
13:04
effect and it kind of
13:06
started the whole compressor pedal
13:09
thing and then of course all sorts of
13:10
other guys came after that
13:12
really was kind of the boss compressors
13:14
in the 80s and then of course you had
13:16
uh you know things coming out in the 90s
13:18
and 2000s where he actually had
13:19
variations
13:21
a side note you know the the ross
13:24
compressor
13:25
is talked about a lot but i just i need
13:28
you to know that that is a
13:29
exceedingly rare pedal they are hard to
13:32
find
13:33
and yes it's a you know kind of
13:35
improvement over the dynacomp
13:37
but it was not common i mean they are
13:41
incredibly hard to find and really you
13:43
know trey with fish was kind of the guy
13:45
that popularized them
13:46
many years after they were you know no
13:48
longer even being made
13:49
so anywho dynacomp
13:53
um let's
13:56
let's uh you know let's kind of set it
13:59
in a
14:00
in a less extreme fashion but also
14:03
i want to show you what the dynacop is
14:05
doing to your tone
14:06
so one i've got this going through a
14:09
true bypass
14:10
little looper thing and the reason is is
14:12
that i just have to tell you right now
14:14
the script logo dynacomp has a terrible
14:16
bypass
14:17
i mean it completely kills your tone
14:19
when you turn it off
14:21
and that's why you'll see a lot of them
14:22
out there that have been modified to
14:24
have a true bypass switch
14:26
and of course there's no led on there so
14:28
that's another thing that's
14:29
been put on many of them and frankly i
14:31
don't think that's a
14:32
bad thing it just makes it a better deal
14:34
for you if you want to grab one of these
14:39
when you turn them on it is
14:42
not a transparent compressor in any way
14:44
even if you turn it down a lot
14:47
it frankly uh adds a sheen to your high
14:51
end
14:52
and it cuts base now in some ways
14:56
you know probably for an engineer they
14:59
might like that you know
15:00
the fact that the guitar player's base
15:02
was cut a little bit and the
15:04
high end has a sheen to it and it can be
15:06
a good thing in some ways
15:07
you know people think that you put an
15:09
old dynacomp on it sounds like the
15:10
guitar has been mastered or something
15:12
but uh it uh it does
15:16
really uh kill you know low end
15:19
uh yeah so let's just hear that real
15:22
quick
15:23
i'm just gonna you know
15:29
[Music]
15:35
so you can hear that it's really lopping
15:38
that stuff off and that's and i've got
15:40
it set towards unity gain so on the high
15:42
end it's still
15:43
you know similar output let me you know
15:46
again this is this is with the
15:47
sensitivity up pretty high
15:49
it's you know around 10 o'clock and i've
15:50
got the output about noon
15:52
the really the you know what people
15:55
think of as the
15:56
classic setting where it's more subtle
15:58
is to have
15:59
them have the knobs facing each other
16:02
like that
16:03
maybe the output just back it off a
16:05
touch
16:06
and that's that's kind of the uh
16:22
you can hear it squashing and sustaining
16:24
but not to the degree it was when i was
16:26
playing the earlier thing so if i played
16:28
that reggie young thing again you get it
16:36
[Music]
16:48
uh
16:53
so so my take on the dynacomp
16:57
um i bought this one years ago and
17:02
i've had a bunch of different dynacomps
17:04
i've had
17:05
reissues made by dunlop i've had block
17:08
logo ones i've had script logo ones
17:11
and i have to say for what it is not to
17:14
get into the hype or anything but
17:16
the old script logo ones with the canned
17:18
you know
17:19
ca you know 30 30 80
17:23
they just they have something to them
17:25
they do have a little bit
17:26
something extra special i remember
17:28
buying a block logo one and a buddy of
17:31
mine bought a script
17:32
logo one and i was proud of the fact
17:33
that you know my dynacop was 50
17:36
cheaper again this was many many years
17:38
ago buying them from a little shop in
17:40
nashville called tusculum music that had
17:42
all sorts of great used pedals
17:44
and then i did a comparison between my
17:46
block logo one
17:48
again it was still a 70s block logo and
17:50
his you know the script logo one and his
17:53
yeah his just felt better it just felt
17:56
and i
17:56
i feel like the uh yeah the the old
17:59
script logos and
18:01
and i tend to prefer the ones with the
18:03
zinc housing the heavier ones
18:05
and i don't know if that's voodoo or not
18:08
but
18:08
uh you know the zinc ones i've played i
18:10
ended up tended to like the uh
18:12
the sound of them more again that might
18:14
be getting into
18:16
voodoo and such but uh yeah
18:19
so i have this one i would never
18:22
you know get rid of it um but do i
18:25
suggest that somebody go out and buy one
18:28
i don't know it depends on what you want
18:30
now it has a it has a one trick that it
18:32
does and it's r
18:33
and it's a great trick but if you're
18:35
wanting like a subtle compressor
18:37
there's so many other things out there
18:39
that will do a better job
18:41
especially you know ones with a mix
18:43
control like the barber tone press
18:46
the wampler ego compressor or the true
18:49
tone route 66
18:51
or you know or even there's the the
18:53
mirage compressor like uh
18:55
you know another one of my heroes john
18:57
leventhal uses
18:58
and that's a good kind of subtle
19:00
compressor but it just has two knobs and
19:02
it just
19:03
tends to yeah smooth things out and not
19:05
be the
19:06
exaggerated thing the other thing that's
19:08
a
19:10
that's tough about these compressor
19:11
pedals is they
19:13
uh they bring up noise you know and
19:15
that's just part of the
19:16
you know a compressor pedal is gonna
19:17
tend to bring up noise because of the
19:19
fact that it's bringing up
19:20
weak signal it's amplifying it so
19:24
yeah so if you want a really cool effect
19:27
if you want a dynacomp then you know try
19:29
to find an old you know script logo one
19:31
they're
19:32
really neat but if you're wanting
19:33
something to smooth it out go somewhere
19:35
else
19:37
all right one last thing just kind of a
19:40
a lesson thing and that's just on the uh
19:43
the reggie young
19:44
uh footlights solo i just really love
19:48
this kind of major minor thing that uh
19:51
that he does
19:52
you know
19:58
i just think that's uh that's a that's a
20:01
great thing and i think
20:02
also this solo is really good for
20:05
working on your bins and getting them
20:06
exact you know
20:08
[Music]
20:13
kind of dragging them out and such so
20:16
you know work on that a bit all right
20:19
guys well thank
20:20
you so much we'll see you next time bye