vintage / boutique vs. "mass produced garbage" FX

[worship_mud]

a few days ago i found a decently priced boss OC2 and because i had it on my bucket list for quite a while i bought it, although i already have an octaver, the MXR bass octave deluxe.

having spent the whole evening with comparing them, the MXR clearly and without a doubt blew the OC2 out of the water. the mxr sounds fatter, tracks way better and can produce several rather different sounds and is usable down to A (with short notes to G). the OC2 shines (to me) only when played in higher registers and without the added direct / clean sound.then it has a nice synth sound. with the added second octave it produces a dissonant, ringmod-like tone, which becomes more dominant the lower you go.

i was quite surprised, as the OC2 is so highly regarded and praised on all forums. here the off-the-mill effect was clearly serving the intended purpose better than the vintage gear (though the OC2 is not bad by any means, and has a quircky charm of his own)

something similar happened in the past, when i got my 3leafaudio wonderlove and the iron ether polytope

the wonderlove directly compared to the MXR envelope filter sounds fatter and funkier, but you have to really turn those knobs for results, which then are really good. but the glory is over, as soon as you put some other effect in front of it. you have to immediatly re-adjust not only the sensevity, but also the envelope attack.
here the MXR shines, no matter what (or how many) effect you put in front of it, it sounds good. may it hasn't the ultimate fatness of the wonderlove, but it's close enough and is much more practical and forgiving (i know, that the wonderlove has an effect loop, but i feed it with several other effects (fuzz, oct) so i can't put one effect into the loop, because i might need another one combined with the wonderlove)

the iron ether has similar simptoms, hard to set up, as soon as it is combined with another effect it needs re-adjust and those adjustments are hard to find, because the range of adjustments is sooooo huge, a tenth of a millimeter too far and the sound is not usable anymore. i had a borrowed tech21 boost chorus, which worked very much comparable to the mxr's mentioned above. sensible range of settings, easier to set up, easier to change set ups...

so my heretical hypothesis is that mass produced, off the mill effects are better than their hyped boutique and vintage brethrens....

let the bloodshed begin....

[bartelby]

I thought it was the glitchy synth nature to the OC2 that attracted some people to it.

[dannybuoy]

When it comes to usability issues like you describe, there are no real differences between mass produced or boutique - there are only good and bad designs (and designers). I wouldn't be surprised if some MXR pedals are designed by one guy, just like a boutique shop.

Taking another factor into account which you didn't mention - build quality. I have seen good and bad examples from both camps also. There are only good and bad builds (and builders!).

[bartelby]

Also remember that the vintage of today was the mass produced garbage of yesterday...

[cheddatom]

Well, yeh, OC-2 was mass produced, and I wouldn't describe it as "boutique". The main reason people love it is for it's glitchy sythny nature, so I guess you just didn't like it.

[Jus Lukin]

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Edited February 28, 2022 by Jus Lukin

[Bo0tsy]

I have a mixture of boutique and mass-produced effects, however, I don't think it is as black and white to say mass-produced is superior to boutique or vice-versa. It definitely pays to do your research on each effect and seeing what else is out there that's similar & how does it compare before making a purchase, so you know exactly what to expect. I've failed to do that on a couple of occasions and ended up with pedals I'm less than happy with, so I don't rush into a decision these-days.

[Sibob]

I'd say it's about matching the pedal to your setup. If you think the MXR sounds better, use the MXR .
I always have a problem with people laying into tracking though, I've shown a couple of rooms of people (at Bass Bashes) the OC-2 tracking down to an A on the E string, and to a point as low as an F#, how long a note tracks for obviously decreases as it gets lower.

I think the 'Vintage' vs 'Boutique' thing gets overblown a lot of the time. Essentially, a lot of old pedals were low tech, as such, they often had weird settings and hardware/components that acted in weird ways in some settings. As such, a lot of newer users looking for weird and wonderful sounds/noises prefer these old pedals that would have perhaps be seen as useless back in the day (DODs Meatbox is a great example).

Newer pedals that are meant to be an overdrive, are just an overdrive, design and technology is at the point where there are no weird sounds, no strange surprises, it's just a good, solid overdrive pedal. The flip side of course is that now, when a builder MEANS to build a weird pedal, they get very weird (Rainbow Machine anyone?).

That said, I've still not heard an octave pedal that can beat the OC-2 for me ......not even the new 3 Leaf Octavbre

Si