Struggling a little with my Aguilar Octamizer

[goblin]

Hi all, I'm running an Aggy Octamizer as per title, and so far so good it's been great, but it's not been perfect. I find that it doesn't track as cleanly as I'd like it to and wondering if there's anything I could do to improve it.

Signal chain goes as follows - A/B Box - Tuner - Octamizer - Chorus - Compression. I tried moving it to the end of the chain, but didn't see much improvement, and it got worse when I tried adding chorus, so I put it in between comp and chorus, and it seems to have improved things a bit, but not enough.

Has anyone got any further thoughts? My basses have pretty hot signals so I'm wondering if this could perhaps be effecting it, as with my previous Warwick which wasn't quite so hot, it seemed fine.

[Fionn]

It will track better if placed after the compressor. That should improve matters, but an Aguilar Octamizer is never going to track the low stuff perfectly.

[goblin]

Yeah I thought it would, I'll give it a shot and see what happens. I played with the demo unit at LBGS to see what their settings were like, and it was fantastic, so I have a hunch it's partly signal related.

I've not yet tried it with my Jazz so perhaps I'll give that a shot, see if it's any better.

[pantherairsoft]

It's an analogue Octaver and built in a fairly old school way. It needs very clean and tidy finger technique as it's monophonic, so even gently brushing your finger on another string while playing 'can' confuse the tracking.
Also, top end will mess it up as the additional harmonics in the signal can confuse it. Try rolling to the bridge pickup and see if that helps.

FWIW, in my experience, putting a compressor before it does absolutely nothing, certainly not with my technique, and then you have the issue that your compression is at the start of the chain, which may not suit the rest of your set up (assuming you put the compressor there for a reason).

Typically when using a monophonic octave pedal you have to learn to 'play the pedal' as opposed to treating it like something that will effect what you do.

Shep

Edited March 21, 2014 by pantherairsoft

[goblin]

Cheers Shep, I wondered if technique could have been anything to do with it, I'm a very clean player, but I'm still getting used to the G&L, and it's a very unforgiving bass, partly due to how hot a signal it sends, it highlights more deficiencies in my playing - same story with the Wal.

So by the looks of it, need to improve my playing

[Romeo2]

I switch between playing a G&L L-2000 Tribute with Elixirs on, maple neck, and a Jazz with flats on, rosewood neck, through the Octamizer and I guess my comment is just to agree with the above - the cleaner and more 'carefully played' signal you give it the cleaner octa-beast sounds it produces. Definitely a smoother, 'synthier' sound from the Jazz with flats and a more aggressive, sort of even distorted growl from G&L with rounds.

You can do some tinkering with the balance of levels of octa and clean, and the filters - you can find a very sweet spot for any bass you play through it.

The tracking is not great as it is analogue but that is exactly why I LOVE it, how it seems a bit unstable, like an irritated, hungry bear.

[molan]

I've tried quite a few Octave pedals and settled on the Aggie a while ago. I've found it tracks better than a lot of others I've used and it's the only one in confident using live.

Have you had a look at the various settings on the Aguilar website? I pretty much copied one of those and found it works really well.

I think I have more or less each control set around 1 o'clock.