From Suhr:

Together, Kevin Suhr and Andy Wood have built a compressor that is the foundation of some of Andy’s favorite tones. As you know, Andy plays in multiple musical environments and this small compressor echos his versatility. The conception of the Suhr Woodshed Comp was to make something unique and with more character than the commonly used compressors on the market. Compressors are like overdrives; they all have different flavors and do different things. With the Woodshed Comp, the main goals were to provide compression while maintaining the tone and transients of the guitar, without being as temperamental as vintage pedals. Don’t let its size fool you. The tonal characteristics of this tiny pedal can only be eclipsed by its durability.

Sometimes, when you start squeezing and compressing, you start losing transients, but not with the Woodshed Comp. There are spikes and imperfections, however, these are what make a tone truly great and make guitars sound like guitars, not like a midi file. Our goal was to retain these nuances while adding soaring sustain, without having to resort to too much drive and distortion. The Woodshed Comp is the best way to keep that fundamental tone, especially when you’re using different amps at different volumes in different venues.

The Suhr Andy Wood Woodshed Comp is set with a fast-attack speed and balanced compression that allows the guitar to sing, punch, and have that sustain. Andy wanted the control’s sweet spot to be in a specific place. In turn, you get a very sensitive range of the controls with a wide sweep, expanded ratio, threshold and gain range. This allows the threshold to work on lower signals, such as single coils. With the Woodshed Comp, a little goes a long way when dialing in your compression.

Woodshed Comp is more natural, open, and present than anything else you’ve heard. Allowing you to get long, soaring sustain, without the need to push your gain too high on your amp. This gives you that singing sustain, without the fizz. One of the most exciting features of the Woodshed Comp is that it has a massive amount of headroom. In fact, the most headroom out of any of our pedals, going almost to the rails (24v) before clipping. In essence, you can use it as a clean boost, with minimal to no compression, and it would act as a high-gain boost. By boosting the beginning of your signal chain and clipping the front of a tube amp, you can get a nice saturation and palm-mutes sound just incredible. All of that in such a tiny and durable package.

There are all different types of compressors, VCA, FET, tube compressors, all with different characteristics. VCA compressors are known for being quick and having less distortion than FET or tube compressors. Our Koji Comp is a VCA compressor that’s more similar to more popular compressor pedals on the market. The new Woodshed Comp is completely different. Though it’s also a VCA compressor, it uses a completely different process for gain-reduction. The biggest difference between the Koji Comp and the Woodshed Comp is how the gain-reduction is controlled. Where the Koji is a ‘feed-back’ design, the Woodshed is a ‘feed-forward’ design. ‘Feed-forward’ works by the signal going into the side-chain, which controls the gain-reduction of the whole thing. In essence, in a ‘feed-back’ design, the output controls the gain-reduction, and in ‘feed-forward’, the input controls the gain- reduction. The Woodshed Comp is a very simple, feed-forward, VCA compressor, tailored towards a studio-type schematic but it works incredibly with a guitar. The ‘feed-forward’ aspect ultimately makes the Woodshed Comp more transparent and open than anything else you’ve heard. In the end, after all of the testing against Andy’s favorite vintage pedal and rack compressors, the Woodshed Comp ended up being the best sounding.