We've reviewed many Cosmotronic modules, and interviewed Matthijs Munnik back in Waveform issue 10 and were even fortunate enough to visit his studio in Den Haag, in the western part of the Netherlands. One thing I've come away with from the interview, the studio visit, Munnik's artwork and Cosmotronic modules is that everything Cosmotronic/Munnik does and is, is impeccable; well designed, thoughtful, and with nothing left to chance. It's precisely this reason why Messor, Cosmotronic's stereo compressor module, is so revered. Subtly beautiful on the outside, it's all power and grace on the inside, resulting in a module that is incredibly versatile and predictable; exactly what you want from a studio grade compressor. No surprise then, that Cosmotronic's first foray into pedals, the Messor Stereo Compressor Pedal, naturally, is more of the same. With a scientific instrument, Pultec-EQP1A-ish look to it, the Messor pedal is an all analog true-bypass VCA feed-forward compressor that challenges your 19" rack compressor to what turns out to be a pretty an unfair fight.
Supplied with balanced ¼" TRS stereo ins and outs, and up to 18dB of gain for both the input and make-up gain, Messor works well with guitars, synths, drum machines, and pretty much anything you can think to throw at it. There's a selectable LP/HP 1-pole sidechain filter (from 15Hz to 9kHz), user defined target area, as well as the expected controls for Attack (from 3ms – 120ms), Release (30ms – 2s), Ratio, and Threshold, and there's also a Mix control to set the amount of compressed signal with the dry signal. There are LED's for visualization of the input signal, make-up gain, and also a 3-LED gain reduction gauge, so you can see how much Messor is crushing (or not), taming, or just buddying up to your signal.
I've long used legacy type compressor pedals like a gray Ross pedal, an Orange Squeezer, and a Boss CS-1, and more tweakable pedals like a BYOC 5-knob (essentially a Ross clone), a Pigtronix, and a Diamond and on and on for bass, guitar, and synth, but I've never had a stereo compressor pedal, especially one that could be considered studio grade. Since I don't play out live much, it's easy enough to just record any signal direct to my DAW, sans compression, and add it later, and this is still my desired technique in terms of recording, but using compression as a performance tool, for sculpting a modular drum track? A completely squashed ambient stereo reverb? Pumping parallel compression for the entirety of a rhythm track? I'd really underestimated, or rather, not estimated at all, the value of having something like this within arms reach in situations like this.
I first gave Messor a workout using it in mono to tame my bass as I played along to a simple drum track in Ableton, just as an easy intro. With tasteful compression Messor was almost imperceptible, and granted, I wasn't pushing it hard, but it's a good first test. Lowering the threshold and adjusting the attack and release times and digging in with a more firm playing style (and a sturdier pick) and I was able to get a pretty crunchy, aggressive sound that really opened up. I wasn't too surprised with how much my playing effected the dynamics of the overall sound, but still, Messor responded very well, and adjusting the mix amount, and the in and output signal really let me dial in my sound with precision.
Using Messor to add parallel compression—something I routinely do in recordings—to drums on a modular track, is something that if you haven't experimented with/experienced yet, you should. Crushing the drums and brining them up to taste to fill out the overall drum sound is an old pro audio trick that I'd somehow never tried in modular…until now, and I'm not sure I can go back. I still love A/B'ing drum tracks with and without the added compression track; it's like tasting excellent wines with subtle, almost hidden notes of flavor, that if they're missing, brings them down to pedestrian closeout pricing levels. With Messor, you don't even have to A/B since you have the Mix control, which essentially does the same thing at the extremes. Whether the drums are coming from a modular or drum machine, no matter, having Messor nearby makes dialing in your sound more fun and tactile than in a DAW or a menu-based module or pedal, and bringing in or removing a compressed stereo track is akin to a filter sweep or DJ style dropout.
While Messor can't be used as a discrete dual mono compressor (both channels are tied to the same settings), you could use it for two different channels, just so long as you're OK with more of an experimental feel for one of the channels. As an example, I processed a bassline through one channel and hi-hats through the other, while optimizing the controls on Messor to work well with taming and slightly squashing the bass. The bass turned out great—warm and punchy while cutting through the mix well. The result on the hats was not at all what I would normally set out to achieve in a drum track—they were kind of muted and not too dynamic—but this was part of the fun, this hitching of the hats to the bass, and it helped get me out of my normal percussion creation routine. One of the most unique aspects to Messor is the mono-summed sidechain that dynamics engine is built around. It has mellow 6 dB/oct high-pass or low-pass filter, which is great for eliminating bad triggering of the compression by filtering out unwanted frequency energy. Patch in CV of all sorts and the sidechain can get pretty experimental. More traditional sidechain inputs, of course, work best in a normal sense, but using a S&H for the sidechain input revealed some very unorthodox compression timing.I've been trying to recall off the top of my head how many pedals that I can remember have been turned into Eurorack modules. I wouldn't say it's a lot, but there are definitely more than the other way around—modules to pedals. Maybe modules just don't translate as well to the pedal world? I'm not really sure, but Cosmotronic's Messor is certainly one that does. It worked great on individual instruments, subsets of patches, adding color or taming drums…anything you would want a pro audio compressor to do, Messor can handle it. I would not at all be surprised to see more pedals from Cosmotronic in the future. Rock solid.

Price: $379

cosmotronic.nl