Olinthus delivers it's most practically useful Tiny pedal to date - the sleek diminutive Pillbug FET Compressor

The blurb says something about the Pillbug being inspired by both the Boss CS-2 Compressions Sustainer, as well as the Ross Compressor - while those are 2 slightly different technologies - the first being a FET type, and the latter an OTA type. I’m guessing they mean that they have captured the warmth of the Boss CS-2 along with the added brightness of the Ross Compressor - which in turn was just 2 pars away from the MXR Dynacomp Compressor

• Pillbug Controls - Level, Attack, Sustain.
• CS-2 Controls - Level, Attack, Sustain.
• Ross Controls - Sustain, Level.

I think it’s safe to say that the lineage here is mostly CS-2 inspired.

So many players only use a Compressor only to the the tiniest degree. So they should deploy the pedal that has the tiniest degree of footprint - and the Pillbug seems to be perfect for that context.

I have around 115 Big Muff types now - so I didn’t really fell like I needed another of that ilk. I felt that the Cicada was a little short on volume, and presumed it would be similar with the Earwig.

I only own around a dozen compressors, which I indeed often use very sparingly, and thus this pillbug feels quite suitable for me - while I don’t really need it, but would like to check it out just to see how well it works, and whether it would make sense within my rig.

Of course like the Cicada and Earwig before it, the Pillbug holds to the exact same formula and forma factor, and indeed goes for the same very reasonable sum on $99 - from the Olinthus webstore.

This isn’t a big priority for me - but it will be nice to check this out early in 2026.

Here follow a few of the launch videos / demos.