Off the top of my head, in no particular order. Not a complete list. No offense meant, only brainstorming here
- you'll probably want legend/fonts with less sharp edges if going for engraving
- hard bypass needed
- meter is OK, but you'll probably be able to find some more classy ones (that one screams "1979!!! 1979!!!")*
- Why not rotary switch for the ratio? Would look more coherent and less "scary in the 1967 Japanese way"
- The S6 (Vorverzerrung) - looks like a sidechain emphasis on high frequencies.. Shouldn't that have a place?
- chikenheads are un-european and thus only serves to builds mistrust, unless you're guitarist
- try some dual-time-constants like the GSSL "auto" - this often works really nice with low ratios
- put in more time constants - you're only using one deck of each switch, just go for all 11 possible settings you have anyway. exact timings are very important for perceived "musicality" of a comp.
- on the other hand, you very very very rarely want more than two sidechain hpf freq's, like off, 80 and 160
- consider doing it as stereo-in-one-box, makes it much much easier in every-day use
- ("LINK UNIT") you probably don't want this small toggle switch type, it breaks, and until then it screams "cheap" (even if not)
- if you have the "cal" setting for the meter brought out to front panel, you will want the "abgleich" trimmers out here as well.
Again, for now, just mock up the circuit with whatever metal you have. Make it electrically safe but not beautiful. Then get it to people with good ears and explanation skills - the important thing is to get it tried IRL and harvest feedback on what is good, what is bad, and what we want more of
/Jakob E.
*somewhere I have a stash of meters for my G-III (a compressor that was sadly banned under european law) - ballistics nice for vari-mu comp use. Could send you a handful of these if you want to try that route?
