If you could only choose one octave pedal

[radiophonic]

The Okto Nojs is turning out to be a win. It definitely took some finessing to stop the tracking glitching, but provided I avoid open strings and don't pluck to hard, it seems pretty stable. The tone is exactly what I want and the latency really is night and day compared to the digital octavers I'd tried. Our singer was so enamoured with it that she demanded we re-write a song to foreground the sub bass. 

[xgsjx]

14 minutes ago, jposega said:

I've never had better results running a boost into an octave pedal. If tracking is poor, it may because the octave is actually being driven too hard. I've found OC2s and their derivatives to track better with a slightly reduced input volume. That said, it also takes clean technique and finding the right setting for your tone pots so you don't feed the pedal too much string noise.

I've never tried it, it was just a thought.  Though I know envelope followers often work better with a "not so hot" signal.  I've never had any major tracking issues with either the OC-3 or the MXR BOD.  They both track down to A (5th fret on the E).  Both seem to wobble on the Ab.

As this is a "Which octaver" thread, here's my tuppence on the 2 that I've had.

The OC-3 is very similar to the OC-2, but it does have a different tone to it.  However, the tracking was better than the OC-2 that I tried & I liked the poly mode too.

The MXR BOD is very different.  It has 2 versions of a -1 octave called Girth & Growl as well as a clean.  It can get some decent sounds for your base synth sound, but with the clean blend & a mid boost, it really does do funk pretty well.

[Quatschmacher]

4 minutes ago, xgsjx said:

I've never had any major tracking issues with either the OC-3 or the MXR BOD.  They both track down to A (5th fret on the E).  Both seem to wobble on the Ab.

What bass are you using? My BOD tracks to low F on P and J basses and am using rounds and flats.

Edited April 7, 2018 by Quatschmacher

[xgsjx]

1 hour ago, Quatschmacher said:

What bass are you using? My BOD tracks to low F on P and J basses and am using rounds and flats.

I play an Ibby SR1000 with D'addario Chromes.  Turned it into a passive bass a few years back.  I'll need to try & see how it sounds on the lower notes, try & get that low F.  At band jam, it didn't sound good below A, but the house rig could be adding to that.

[Quatschmacher]

12 minutes ago, xgsjx said:

I play an Ibby SR1000 with D'addario Chromes.  Turned it into a passive bass a few years back.  I'll need to try & see how it sounds on the lower notes, try & get that low F.  At band jam, it didn't sound good below A, but the house rig could be adding to that.

Are you running it off the front pickup only? If not, try that.

Below low A will sound muddy. I’d probably only play down there with the BOD if playing mostly clean signal with a small amount of sub rolled in to beef it up. Playing the soloed sub voice down that low isn’t terribly musical-sounding.

[xgsjx]

9 hours ago, Quatschmacher said:

Are you running it off the front pickup only? If not, try that.

Below low A will sound muddy. I’d probably only play down there with the BOD if playing mostly clean signal with a small amount of sub rolled in to beef it up. Playing the soloed sub voice down that low isn’t terribly musical-sounding.

It was the solo octave down that I was referring to.  With a mostly clean & just a touch of sub, then I can play open E if I like as it's just adding a bit of depth to the sound (which the BOD is rather good at).  It's when I'm doing synth sounding stuff that I find anything below A doesn't track too well, though I'm gonna try on my own at home either today or tomorrow.

I always run the neck pickup & sometimes blend a little bridge in too.

[Al Krow]

9 hours ago, xgsjx said:

I play an Ibby SR1000 with D'addario Chromes.  Turned it into a passive bass a few years back.  I'll need to try & see how it sounds on the lower notes, try & get that low F.  At band jam, it didn't sound good below A, but the house rig could be adding to that.

Big fan of the Ibby SR Premium range! What PUPs does your's feature?

I'm with you in terms of when playing 'normally' that most octavers struggle to track well below the A. The key point for me is that they don't noticeably glitch when they fail to track and that's probably the key reason for me seeking out octavers that can track well right down to the open E.

It's generally accepted that the lowest point on human hearing range is 20Hz, which interestingly also happens to be the frequency (20.6Hz) of the E an octave below the open E string; however in practice I think most audiences in a live context would find it hard to distinguish anything lower than the C on the bottom B string, so being able to track down to an open A should, in practice, suffice absent noticeable glitching.

FWIW - having tried a fair number of octavers I've settled on the COG T16 v2. In terms of analogue octavers, which generally benefit from lower latency than their digital counterparts, I found that the COG (and also the Aggie Octamizer) both sat really well with other pedals and the 'glitching', when they failed to track, was significantly less noticeable with both of them than with Emma Okto Nojs and 3Leaf Octavbre Mini. The BOD was the best at tracking low (down to the F on the E string) - however I couldn't get over just how 'noisy' the BOD is when it's engaged but not being played (apparently it has a very sensitive and consequently noisy circuit) and it lasted all of 48 hours on my board!
 

[Quatschmacher]

1 hour ago, Al Krow said:

the 'glitching', when they failed to track, was significantly less noticeable with both of them than with Emma Okto Nojs and 3Leaf Octavbre Mini. The BOD was the best at tracking low (down to the

I wonder if this is more to do with the overtone frequencies present. The glitchier pedals happen to be the ones which have stronger mid presence. (Doesn’t the T-16 sound glitchier when its filter is open? It did for me.) When the sub octave signal has the low pass filter applied it’s much less noticeable when it drops out when mistracking.

Edited April 8, 2018 by Quatschmacher

[radiophonic]

19 minutes ago, Quatschmacher said:

I wonder if this is more to do with the overtone frequencies present. The glitchier pedals happen to be the ones which have stronger mid presence. (Doesn’t the T-16 sound glitchier when its filter is open? It did for me.) When the sub octave signal has the low pass filter applied it’s much less noticeable when it drops out when mistracking.

Is the filter the same one used to control the input? I's always assumed that input filtering was something separate - to clean up the input ahead of square waving it - and the external filter controls worked on the output. If I'm wrong then your idea seems likely. I've definitely noticed that my Octo Nojs glitches more low down on the A string than the same notes played on the E string - particularly when trying to sustain. I'm guessing it's loosing the fundamental earlier and that the pickup location on a stingray exacerbates this. Not a deal breaker, it just requires a bit of thought when playing sustained lines. 

[xgsjx]

2 hours ago, Al Krow said:

Big fan of the Ibby SR Premium range! What PUPs does your's feature?

I'm with you in terms of when playing 'normally' that most octavers struggle to track well below the A. The key point for me is that they don't noticeably glitch when they fail to track and that's probably the key reason for me seeking out octavers that can track well right down to the open E.

It's generally accepted that the lowest point on human hearing range is 20Hz, which interestingly also happens to be the frequency (20.6Hz) of the E an octave below the open E string; however in practice I think most audiences in a live context would find it hard to distinguish anything lower than the C on the bottom B string, so being able to track down to an open A should, in practice, suffice absent noticeable glitching.

FWIW - having tried a fair number of octavers I've settled on the COG T16 v2. In terms of analogue octavers, which generally benefit from lower latency than their digital counterparts, I found that the COG (and also the Aggie Octamizer) both sat really well with other pedals and the 'glitching', when they failed to track, was significantly less noticeable with both of them than with Emma Okto Nojs and 3Leaf Octavbre Mini. The BOD was the best at tracking low (down to the F on the E string) - however I couldn't get over just how 'noisy' the BOD is when it's engaged but not being played (apparently it has a very sensitive and consequently noisy circuit) and it lasted all of 48 hours on my board!
 

It's got the IBZ USA C2 PUPs, PJ config.

 

I've never noticed any noise from the BOD when I'm not playing.  Could it be caused by the signal from your bass if it's an active bass?  My Ibby is passive.

[Quatschmacher]

1 hour ago, radiophonic said:

Is the filter the same one used to control the input? I's always assumed that input filtering was something separate - to clean up the input ahead of square waving it - and the external filter controls worked on the output. If I'm wrong then your idea seems likely. I've definitely noticed that my Octo Nojs glitches more low down on the A string than the same notes played on the E string - particularly when trying to sustain. I'm guessing it's loosing the fundamental earlier and that the pickup location on a stingray exacerbates this. Not a deal breaker, it just requires a bit of thought when playing sustained lines. 

As far as I understood it the filter was post-square-wave-generation. i.e. it’s simply a lowpass filter applied to the square wave output signal.

Tracking the same pitch on different strings is due to the different overtones present on the different strings. A B on the A string has more overtones than the same B played higher up on the E string. The closer you are to the middle of the string, the closer you get to pure fundamental. Try plucking halfway between the bridge and the fretted note to hear the difference. 

Edited April 8, 2018 by Quatschmacher

[Grangur]

37 minutes ago, xgsjx said:

It's got the IBZ USA C2 PUPs, PJ config.

 

I've never noticed any noise from the BOD when I'm not playing.  Could it be caused by the signal from your bass if it's an active bass?  My Ibby is passive.

Sir, that is stunning. Please can you tell us what that bass is? We can see you've changed the bridge and pups, but what was it originally?

[Al Krow]

@Grangur - see the Ibby SR thread for further discussion on the bass. 

[CliveT]

On 07/04/2018 at 22:59, xgsjx said:

The MXR BOD is very different.  It has 2 versions of a -1 octave called Girth & Growl as well as a clean.  It can get some decent sounds for your base synth sound, but with the clean blend & a mid boost, it really does do funk pretty well.

Where do you guys prefer the mid boost set on the BOD?  With my P bass the 850 hz setting seems to have more presence but it doesn't seem to sit in the mix as well as the 400 hz setting so I stick to the lower setting.  Factory setting does work best for me.

[xgsjx]

I’ve got mine on 400hz, though I usually just use Girth & Growl with no original signal for getting synth basics & the boost is usually off if I do blend in the original. 

[Quatschmacher]

I’ve never opened mine up to change it. Factory works just fine for me. 

[CliveT]

1 hour ago, Quatschmacher said:

I’ve never opened mine up to change it. Factory works just fine for me. 

Ah ha, perfect.  I bought mine used so am not 100% sure if I have factory settings.  If you get the chance would you be able to open it and see please?  I have mine set to 400hz, and the screw is at 50%, so 12:00.

[Quatschmacher]

35 minutes ago, CliveT said:

Ah ha, perfect.  I bought mine used so am not 100% sure if I have factory settings.  If you get the chance would you be able to open it and see please?  I have mine set to 400hz, and the screw is at 50%, so 12:00.

Mine’s definitely factory and the settings are listed in the user manual. 

[Quatschmacher]

How has no-one mentioned the Red Witch Zeus? (I couldn’t find and entry in this thread using the search function.) I didn’t realise this was an octave and a gated fuzz. The demos sound great. @CameronJ, you’ve tried one, right and you have one, don’t you, @GisserD?

The demos I’ve checked out sound pretty great. The Uriah Duffy one shows off the gated fuzz really well. 

Edited April 11, 2018 by Quatschmacher

[Quatschmacher]

42 minutes ago, CliveT said:

Ah ha, perfect.  I bought mine used so am not 100% sure if I have factory settings.  If you get the chance would you be able to open it and see please?  I have mine set to 400hz, and the screw is at 50%, so 12:00.

See here:

 

Edited April 11, 2018 by Quatschmacher

[GisserD]

1 minute ago, Quatschmacher said:

How has no-one mentioned the Red Witch Zeus? (I couldn’t find and entry in this thread using the search function.) I didn’t realise this was an octave and a gated fuzz. The demos sound great. @CameronJ, you’ve tried one, right and you have one, don’t you, @GisserD?

The demos I’ve checked out sound pretty great. The Uriah Duffy one shows off the gated fuzz really well. 

I LOVE MINE.

The fuzz can get really sputtery, and nasty and sounds amazing in front of a filter. The octave side is clean and fat and very OC2 like.

the only reason i havent got mine on the board is that 2 sided pedals dont fit in with my modular ES8 pedalboard approach. using each side in isolation would involve more tap dancing than i like and opens up the mid set errors that i try so hard to avoid

 

[Quatschmacher]

Just now, GisserD said:

I LOVE MINE.

The fuzz can get really sputtery, and nasty and sounds amazing in front of a filter. The octave side is clean and fat and very OC2 like.

the only reason i havent got mine on the board is that 2 sided pedals dont fit in with my modular ES8 pedalboard approach. using each side in isolation would involve more tap dancing than i like and opens up the mid set errors that i try so hard to avoid

 

It’s just been added to my list, along with the Mastotron. Really wish you and I could meet up as we could save each other a bunch of money trying out eachother’s stuff. It’d probably justify the train fares.

[CliveT]

11 minutes ago, Quatschmacher said:

See here:

 

Perfect   Thanks

[CameronJ]

Re: the Zeus, I’ve never tried one but have listened to a ton of sound demos of it and to my ears it doesn’t sound anywhere near as good as the Okto Nøjs.

IMO, YMMV etc.

[GisserD]

47 minutes ago, CameronJ said:

Re: the Zeus, I’ve never tried one but have listened to a ton of sound demos of it and to my ears it doesn’t sound anywhere near as good as the Okto Nøjs.

IMO, YMMV etc.

I back to backed them a few times. 

To my ears there was no competition on the fuzz side. The zeus is gnarly and sputtery. Whereas the okto was just a bit smoother. I sold the okto on swiftly.  Strokes for folks tho. 

The octaves were comparable but again the zeus won out for me.