In this case the "mushy" sound has nothing to do with compression and everything to do with the 10 uf cap across the output of the TA-7222AP chip. It's basically a short to all the treble and an open to the base frequencies. Exactly what ones does to create a "high cut" tone control and what we want to avoid if the goal is to provide even compression across the audio range.
Turner mics sound bassey for the same reason Astatic mics sound trebly. It's the frequency response of the element used in the mic. Cheap speech compressors can cut treble for the same reason cheap echo boards do. They use filters to limit the frequency response to communications grade audio.
Light compression can sound as natural as music on your FM radio. Heavy compression can be as annoying as our countries useless emergency alert system. So objectionable that every hearing person in range cuts the volume smack off the very second the tones hit the speaker!
If you want natural sounding compression you really have to avoid just about everything made for this market. You don't have to spend more money either. Cheap compressors geared for the pirate broadcast market are available for $40 and run circles around the fidelity the CB and ham stuff offers.
With respect to me providing the resistor values that could be used to replace the 10 uf cap, that requires experimentation with the circuit to find the optimum values. I also don't feel this loading approach is the best method and was just providing clues to improve it's function across the audio range it's used in.
Loading the circuit harder like this causes more distortion and has an effect on the entire audio signal, not just the peaks we need to address. Extra loading will also cause the output to flat top earlier than it would normally and there is no filtering afterwards to reverse this process.
Even the cheapest compressors don't use this loading approach. They simply chop off everything in excess of the desired level using a limiter. Leaving it as flat topped and distorted as you can imagine. Only to run it through effective low pass filtering that cleans it right back up with nice rounded corners through the peaks.
