Universal Audio UAFX LA-2A Studio Compressor

If your looking for a quality compressor in the optical area this is as good as any from the competion. However If you are looking for the chicken picking with an obvious squish choose another pedal perhaps their other option, also there is no tone knob but for me this dont matter, the pedal makes the signal sound better clearer and leveled out and has other features you wont find on others. No noise either the 3 switches it has offer further options to try with the buffer or true bypass, the release speed switch and the choice of comp and limiter. For the more convensional use try the comp mode for rasing up quiet picking as well as reducing the loud levels, but if you need to have more picking dynamics but still keep control of the level use the limiter. Its easy to find a sound you like with a few minutes trying any of this stuff.
The mix knob adds in more of the guitar signal so for more obvious compression keep it low and make up the gain with the gain knob.There is plenty of gain make up available as well.
Do be aware of 2 things, first is it takes about 10 seconds to boot up before you can use it after powering up and you will also need an isolated power supply of 9v 250ma minimum they claim it wont work in a daisy chain at all so I did not try it.
The price is mid range and you may be surprised or not that its made in China bit so are iphones. This is a high quality unit so dont let the made in china put you off its not the cheapest option out there but not outrageous either. As it goes I think its worth it. I compared it to my Diamond comp Jr as it sounds similar but this has more options to try but no tone control. UA offer firmware updates but you have to register the product first, I did register and checked out of interest and there no updates just yet (May 2024) Anyway It sounds great as it is so I am happy.