Octave Pedal Suggestions

  • Thread starter Thread starter Walt-Dogg
  • Start date Start date
Walt-Dogg

Walt-Dogg

New member
I'm looking for a good octave pedal to put into my pedal board. I don't know jack-shit about them but I love how they sound and I know it would be fun to use one. I don't really want anything like an MXR Blue-Box or an Octavio because of the fuzz that they have and I have a good distortion pedal that I use to push my amp (Fender Soupah Reverb).
 
Id get a nice harmonizer or pitch shifter...they will also do an octave effect...meaning you can get 2 birds with one stone...I actually bought a Behringer US600 since it was cheap and I dont use the effect much...but you can do alot with them.
 
I'm also looking for octavers.

I've got my eyes on the mi-audio Pollyanna at the moment cos I'm keen to have octave UP as an option. Will give it a go on the weekend (maybe) and report back.
 
If money is no object, and you just want the cool factor, lurk around eBay long enough to grab a Pearl OC-07. Can't be beat. One octave up, one octave down, and two octaves down. Awesome. Just be prepared to pay. The best cheap octave pedal I have is the old DOD FX-35. Maybe $50 on eBay (where I got mine). One octave down only, but it's the only octave pedal I have or have seen that has a tone control for the octave! It tracks nice, which is a problem for many other octave pedals.
The old MIJ Boss octave pedals are fine, as well. The real old ones are even called 'ocatver'. I think they're up to an OC-3 now, but I stop at the OC-2 ;). $100 on eBay, and they'll do one and two octaves down.
 
I've got a Boss OC-2 and I can't really say it's all that cool. I originally bought it in the hopes of using my guitar for recording bass, but the octaves that it generates are like sine waves. No texture or personality to them at all. It's cool that you can individually blend the original signal, octave 1 and octave 2 individually though. And when you have them all going at once, you get that Jimmy Page "Fool In The Rain" kind of tone. It definitely won't track multiple notes though, only single notes at a time.

But all in all I'd have to say look elsewhere than the OC-2. I'm curious how the OC-3 improves on it.
 
Walt-Dogg said:
I'm looking for a good octave pedal to put into my pedal board. I don't know jack-shit about them but I love how they sound and I know it would be fun to use one. I don't really want anything like an MXR Blue-Box or an Octavio because of the fuzz that they have and I have a good distortion pedal that I use to push my amp (Fender Soupah Reverb).
Click to expand...

Fender Blender is awesome for being a wild man, and the French Toast is awesome if you want to sound like a robot alien from hell on the moon.
 
if you want to record distorted riffs that are fat and great sounding, give the OC-3 or OC-2 a try.

I've got an OC-3 and i love it. i fell in love with the cky tone last year, and got all up into using an OC3. great pedal, i love it and still use it everyday. sounds especially great on my dsl100!

here's a few songs i did that use the OC3 pretty exclusivley:

genesis12a (cky cover) -


an original i did -


shock and terror (another cky cover) -


hellions on parade (cky) - http://www.mediafire.com/file/wyuz32mzr15/Hellions On Parade.mp3

holy hell (original lol) - http://www.mediafire.com/file/ljmymt2zzyq/holy hell.mp3 (this is mixing the octave with a whammy doing 5th above etc)


so yeah, these are the basic sounds i was able to get with an OC3 and i love the fatness it brings...don't take my recording into the picture here, as i'm not the best and these were all recorded with only an SM57!
 
ranjam said:
If money is no object, and you just want the cool factor, lurk around eBay long enough to grab a Pearl OC-07. Can't be beat. One octave up, one octave down, and two octaves down. Awesome. Just be prepared to pay. The best cheap octave pedal I have is the old DOD FX-35. Maybe $50 on eBay (where I got mine). One octave down only, but it's the only octave pedal I have or have seen that has a tone control for the octave! It tracks nice, which is a problem for many other octave pedals.
The old MIJ Boss octave pedals are fine, as well. The real old ones are even called 'ocatver'. I think they're up to an OC-3 now, but I stop at the OC-2 ;). $100 on eBay, and they'll do one and two octaves down.
Click to expand...

I bought a used pearl OC-07 in the 80s for about $80...it didnt do what I wanted it to do...I was looking for that Boston/Queen/Starship type harmonized solo sound and I thought an octaver would do that, but it ends up that I was wrong about what intervals I was hearing, and I needed a harmonizer instead...only back then they costed $5000 for an eventide...but you can get it in a footswitch nowdays...and mine was $45.
 
Tadpui said:
I've got a Boss OC-2 and I can't really say it's all that cool.
Click to expand...
It works, tracks fairly well, and is relatively inexpensive. The cool factor is low, but I don't think there's too much wrong with the effect itself. It is just a little vanilla-y.

Tadpui said:
I originally bought it in the hopes of using my guitar for recording bass, but the octaves that it generates are like sine waves. No texture or personality to them at all.
Click to expand...
That's a bad idea to begin with. I remember the old EH Deluxe Octave Multiplexer advertising you could play like Eric Clapton and Jack Bruce simultaneously :confused:. Clapton back then had awesome tone, while Jack Bruce sounded like a carefully executed fart making it impossible for anyone to tell an F from an F#. I'd think you'd want the bass tone to be full and clean, and the guitar tone to be fat with a good sustain. That's pretty freakin' tough to do with any pedal. So I just use it as an octave effect :eek: and don't pretend to be a bass player. Now the tone overall seems a little more palatable.

Tadpui said:
It's cool that you can individually blend the original signal, octave 1 and octave 2 individually though.
Click to expand...
They all do that. Even the cheapest Dan Electro. But, as I said, only the DOD gives you a tone control. That at least lets you shapes the octave tone a little. Better than a kick in the nuts.

Tadpui said:
And when you have them all going at once, you get that Jimmy Page "Fool In The Rain" kind of tone. It definitely won't track multiple notes though, only single notes at a time.
Click to expand...
No, Page was using a ring modulator. Not even close to a simple octave box. The octave box is much more tolerable. The ring modulator was invented as a cruel joke, and tracks even worse than the cheapest octave box.

Tadpui said:
But all in all I'd have to say look elsewhere than the OC-2. I'm curious how the OC-3 improves on it.
Click to expand...
The OC-3 adds a drive control to the octave, allowing you to add distortion to the octave tone. As I type this, I'm thinking I may just give it a second shot. My first impression was the distortion was kinda cheezy. But even according to the Boss web site, the OC-3 is identical to the OC-2 minus the octave distortion control.
 
the OC3 is identical. along with the distortion (which is really fat, actually), it adds another mode. in the new mode, you can tell it how low/high of a pitch you want the octave to be applied to. So, let's say you want some deep octaves between a low E and like, octave of G on the D string, you can make it so that everything below that octave of G will have the 1 oct lower effect added, but everything above it will just be the original note, with no octaves added. i never use it, but it's a cool idea i suppose for chords and whatnot
 
Sure it tracks OK, but that doesn't change the fact that it doesn't really sound all that good. The generated octaves sound a lot like pure sine waves, which sound much more like a piano with no attack than a guitar that's an octave/2 octaves below. It can sound OK as an occasional effect but I guess that's what almost everybody wants an octave pedal for. You really have to have the original signal mixed in there or else the generated octaves sound pretty blah.

And whatever JP used on "Fool In The Rain", the OC2 sounds a lot like it with all 3 octaves going. I didn't say that's what he was using, just that it sounds like it.

I think that the Digitech Whammy does a way better job of low octaves than the OC-2 does. Sounds good when Jack White uses it for bass-like tones. Pretty convincing.

And the OC3 has a different knob setup and several new features, so at least its visually different than the OC-2, whether or not it has the same guts for the octave generation. The OC-2 only has knobs for the gain of each of the 3 octaves (big knobs for octave 1 and 2 and a small knob for the original signal).
 
No one has mentioned the whammy pedal?


I know dimebag's tone wasn't the best in the world :laughings: but that's what he used to double his solo's on all of the pantera/rebel meets rebel/damageplan albums.


Just figured I'd mention it...
 
what? dimebag used an effect for that? lame. i always thought he harmonized himself.

i use the whammy, and i love it for harmonization.
 
Interesting shit.

On a side note, there will be little to no recording done with this pedal, all live, and if recording is done with the pedal it'd just be some lo-fi demo or something.

I gotta see what are available at Guitar Center (local guitar shop deals in mainly acoustics) and try them out.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top