Anasounds Lazy Comp

The Anasounds Lazy Comp is an analog optical compressor pedal handmade in France¹. Where most compressor pedals put four or five knobs on top for threshold, ratio, attack and release, the Lazy Comp puts a single control on the front: a dry/wet Mix knob that blends your clean signal with the compressed signal². The "lazy" in the name is the point. Anasounds describes it as a plug-and-play compressor where you just turn the mix potentiometer to find its sweet spot, with the compression itself adjusted in house before it ships².

Under the hood, the pedal splits your signal into two paths, one clean and one compressed, and the Mix knob controls the blend between them at the output¹. RockBoard's PedalPedia says the circuit delivers natural compression while preserving the dynamics needed for a warm, strong sound³.

What the Lazy Comp does

The Lazy Comp is an optical compressor, meaning it uses a light-dependent element to control gain reduction rather than the voltage-controlled approach of many other compressor pedals. Anasounds describes the result as "a subtle blend of compression and dynamics"², and says the circuit provides natural compression while saving the dynamics necessary for a warm and strong sound³.

The parallel-path design is the key to how it works. The sound entering the pedal is copied into two paths, "clean" and "comp," and the output is a blend of the two, set by the knob¹. Because your untouched signal is always in the mix, the pedal can add sustain and even out levels without flattening the pick attack and volume swells that give playing its feel. This is the same parallel-blend idea found in studio compression, here in a stompbox with one knob.

The maker's stated goal was to make a compressor that is easy to figure out, and Pedal of the Day's reviewer thought they succeeded⁴:

Controls and setup

On the outside there is exactly one control:

Inside the pedal, a trimpot adjusts the overall compression level to your liking⁴. Anasounds sets this up in house before the pedal ships, so the pedal works as a plug-and-play unit out of the box; the trimpot is there if you want to change how hard the compressor works²¹.

Power and connections

The Lazy Comp runs on a 9V DC supply with negative polarity and draws 8.6mA². The power supply is filtered inside the pedal to avoid hum². Input impedance is 330kΩ and output impedance is 470Ω². Switching is true bypass through a gold-plated 3PDT footswitch, so the pedal is out of the signal path when disengaged².

Build and origin

All Anasounds pedals are handmade in France¹. The Lazy Comp sits in a bamboo wood enclosure and measures 14 × 7 × 5 cm². Its op-amps are Texas Instruments OPA integrated circuits².

The pedal came out of a development process Alexandre Fernandez of Anasounds describes in the company's own history: he took feedback from 10 musicians who had a pre-series version of the Lazy Comp before it was finalized⁵. Pedal of the Day's review credits Alexandre and the Anasounds team with "another wonderful effect"⁴.

Where it sits among compressors

Most compressor pedals give you external control over compression amount, attack and release. The Lazy Comp takes the opposite approach: one blend knob outside, one compression trimpot inside, everything else preset by the maker²⁴. For a player who wants compression without dialing in a threshold, that is the whole idea. For a player who wants to shape the attack character of the compression itself, the internal trimpot is the only adjustment available⁴.

Videos

Click to load

Click to load

Click to load

Questions