boss octave oc-2 or 0c-3 ??

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Fetusborg

Fetusborg

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hello all

im a guitarist, and looking to make a solo move, without a proper bass player.
for some live gigging.

so i figured i needed and octave pedal to fatten up my tone.
from all ive read, its obvious that this pedal will NOT give me an authentic bass sound... so ok... i can deal with that. giving me a nice fat tone though will still be nice, and can fill up some bassy voids for some songs.

so between the oc-2 and the oc-3... what do you guys recommend?

the polyphonic setting on the oc-3 seem nice, but not sure if its all worth the price. i can find an oc-3 for around 70, 80 bucks on ebay, while the 0c-2 i can get for what, 20 bucks?

thanks!
 
I used to own an OC-2. I never really cared for it. It didn't really sound very good to my ears, and it wasn't always spot on with it's tracking. I don't have any experience with the OC-3, but I would not recommend the OC-2.
 
In general, octave boxes don't do well with more than one note at a time.
 
so i'd actually have to play my guitar like a bass... one note at a time, to really achieve a decent sound ?
 
I have an OC3, and I bought it for a very similar purpose to what you're wanting. I was pretty disappointed when I got the pedal.

Like he said above, the tracking isn't very good. To improve tracking, they suggest that you use your neck pickup with the tone rolled all the way off. So that leaves you with pretty much a pure sine wave for an input signal. And, as was also mentioned above, it doesn't handle more than single-note input lines.

The pedal is what, $80 new? For not much more than that, you can go to rondomusic.com and get an SX Fender knock-off for around $100 or $120. I have one of those as well, and I wish that I'd just bought the bass first off instead of messing with the pedal.

But the pedal would come in handy if you ever wanted to cover "fool in the rain" by Zeppelin...it nails that solo sound just right with all 3 octaves turned up.

What is it that Jack White of the White Stripes uses to make his guitar sound like a bass? Isn't it like a Digitech Whammy or something like that? Whatever it is, it comes off as pretty convincing.
 
ahh, nice.
i suspected it might be a bit foolish to buy, expecting to get a nice bass tone.

i gather its essentially an effects pedal and not a 'simulator' right. as the name might lead me to believe.

i do have a bass, so i can always use that. but it like the idea of using the guitar for low tones. the audio clips i heard sounded ok of the oc-3. havent heard the oc-2. but for 20 dollars,,, the 2 might be worth buying you know, even if to try it out.

i should go to a store and check it out... but they have none around here.
 
digitech whammy

look in to the digitech whammy.

I THINK:

its kinda different than an octave pedal. it doesnt "track" like a octave pedal, it simply takes the signal and makes it an octave lower. as far as i know you can play chords and it will work.

Adam
 
Fetusborg said:
so i'd actually have to play my guitar like a bass... one note at a time, to really achieve a decent sound ?
Click to expand...

Look on youtube for clips of Billy Harvey. He does solo guitar using an OC-2 to add bass lines. He'll sometimes play a trick where he sets his volumes so when he plays hard the oc-2 tracks with the bass, but if he plays softly it misses the tracking completely and he just gets a guitar sound. So he can fingerpick a guitar line so the bass part only comes out on what he plays with his thumb. Or sometimes he'll just loop the bass line and add guitar overtop (like his song Candleshop).

But in any case, I'd agree the OC-2 still sounds more like synth bass than a real bass guitar, so you're music's gotta be condusive to that.
 
so. here's what i think. you ready?

BOSS SUCKS


there, i said it.


But for this type of thing, here's what I do:


I got myself a whirlwind a/b/y splitter, run one end through my fulltone OCD (hell yeah) and into my guitar amp. Then the second one I run through an ELECTRO HARMONIX OCTAVE MULTIPLEXER, which is the bees knees, as far as I'm concerned. The Multiplexer drops the guitar tone down 1 octave, and you can either blend it with your guitar tone or turn the knob all the way so you get just the low octave. Then I send that cable to a bass rig. Then I put the guitar amp on top of the bass rig and melt peoples faces off.

Of course, like any other pitch shifter, homeboy can't handle chords really well. There are three main ways to handle this.

1) Who cares. The thing is going to give you a tone SOMEWHERE in the chord you are playing, which will sound mostly like a continuous rumble. The question is... does it actually matter? As long as your drummer is an animal and your guitar sounds dope.. it will likely sound... cough cough... like a bass player from your local lamb of god cover band.

2) Be creative. I've been experimenting lately putting a 31 band equalizer in front of it, and i basically annihilate all the high frequencies to keep old faithful from getting so confused on the chords. It kind of (but not really) works.

3) Be selective. Bass=retarded guitar. When you get to the chord section of the song, turn that shit off. Then, when you get to the nasty riff, turn that bad boy back on.

Of course... one could make a good argument and say: "Dude. You're doing it wrong. What you need to do is play a fucking BASS and then go an OCTAVE UP. Like LIGHTNING BOLT DOES."

and they're probably right. But then you'd be playing the retarded guitar. :eek:
 
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