Help me with an octave down rig

[casecandy]

Perfect. I guess I'd put separate loopers and volume pedals on either side, a few fuzz pedals on either side, and call it a day.

This has been immensely helpful.

Thanks for the offer re: the Peavey and regrettably, this reminds me that I think that OR120 sold.

If it didn't do you still want me to pick it up for you

[D.o.S.]

Nah it's all good I have to put that money towards ILFSS.

[CyaNitrate]

Few things come to mind.
A. Aby pedals are super easy to make, if that's all you want them to do. If you need buffering or boosting or phase inverting, you're better off buying one, and lots of options exist.

B. Bass Big Muff and Blue Box immediately came to mind. The BBM has two outs, one dry, and one wet (fuzz). You could run the fuzz channel to one amp, and put the blue box in the clean side going to a separate amp, or...

C. Use a two channel, high wattage Fender amp, like a silverface Twin Reverb. They can be easily modded to have the channels be in phase, meaning you can play into both channels at the same time from the same source. So use an aby, with one side octave down to the normal channel, and the other side going to the reverb channel. This allows you to control volume and eq of each signal independently, but saves you from "needing" two amps, unless you're absolutely set on having a stereo rig.

[Iommic Pope]

CC, this is exactly the sort of rig I am crawling towards, so I'll share my vision with you.
Firstly, amps in/out of phase can be a huge issue, there are a couple of solutions to this. One is the ABY with phase solutions, the other is one of those fancy power conditioning rack dealies that eliminates phase and ground loops. I think Furman make one for not so many dollars.
Secondly, as others have said, split before your octave down, then dirty each signal up accordingly. Peetee nailed it. For myself I was thinking of building/having built a true bypass looper box that did stereo loops with the ABY at the start. That way if you want to do dirts and cleans you only have to step on one switch, for example. The beauty being you can then have two different dirt sounds if you want and get closer to sounding like two instruments.
Finally, I'm looking at using an EHX Ring Thing to do my bass sound, as it apparently tracks great, sounds good and does polyphonic, but I'd really want to hear rom someone who has one as to wether or not it could sound ok and get away with it.
My 2c.

[chutneyfarmer]

I know there's often a stigma around Boss pedals, but definitely take a look at the Boss Line Selector pedal. It's great as a splitter, fx loop switcher, line input/output selector etc. It's what I'd probably go straight to if I was doing this.

http://www.bossus.com/products/ls-2/

[Bon Hoga]

Two things are essential: 1) a bass vi of some description 2) a high-quality aby pedal

[ThurberMingus]

I saw a band that was doing just that last night. They had a really good sound and with the aby switcher they were able to isolate "guitar" or "bass" independently. This was the exact pedalboard:

TU-2>Radial Bones A/B/Y>(chain A)Big Muff>Micro Pog (octave down only fully wet)>POS bass amp
(Chain B)>Rat>Fuzz Factory>AC30

I'm pretty sure the Micro Pog is the best tool for the job!

[ThurberMingus]

I saw a band that was doing just that last night. They had a really good sound and with the aby switcher they were able to isolate "guitar" or "bass" independently. This was the exact pedalboard:

TU-2>Radial Bones A/B/Y>(chain A)Big Muff>Micro Pog (octave down only fully wet)>POS bass amp
(Chain B)>Rat>Fuzz Factory>AC30

I'm pretty sure the Micro Pog is the best tool for the job!

[ShaunNecro]

Just gonna throw this out there

The new Bass Whammy has a polyphonic mode, and it sounds pretty good as well.

[PeteeBee]

I wonder what would sound better... octave down on guitar or octave up on bass? Either way I'm super thankful to have a committed bass player now so I don't have to try to think about covering both or having a ridiculously full sound.

[ShaunNecro]

I wonder what would sound better... octave down on guitar or octave up on bass? Either way I'm super thankful to have a committed bass player now so I don't have to try to think about covering both or having a ridiculously full sound.

Octave down on a guitar. Octave up on a Bass sounds really fake unless you cover it in overdrive/Fuzz.

[bigchiefbc]

Not sure if anyone else has said this yet, but let me steer you away from that Morley A/B/Y (as well as any other passive ABY pedal), you will lose a lot of signal strength in Y mode. I much more highly recommend an active mixer pedal like a Boss LS-2, which you can get for crazy cheap if it's used. I have 2 Boss LS-2s because they're just so damned useful.

[ShaunNecro]

I own the VooDoo Labs Amp Splitter, and that thing is tits. It's also highly likely that you'll need to lift a ground somewhere.

[daseb]

I did this for years and years in a band. Used the radial A/B/Y as it had phase and ground lifting. A micro pog will do the trick but I personally prefer the boss OC3. Seems to track a little better, the pog2 and micro pog I used at points just sounded a little weird.

15" speakers and a good couple of hundred watts headroom on your 'bass' side is essential. The amp will have to work harder to push a pitched-down guitar than it would a bass. Some sort of low end compression on the bass end will help with this.

[casecandy]

All of this is just ridiculously useful

silverface Twin Reverb

I'm certainly spoiled for choice in that department: http://www.kijiji.ca/b-grand-montreal/t ... r/k0l80002
Was thinking of picking one up...

a bass vi of some description

I already have a Danelectro Baritone tuned B-b. My favourite guitar. Has a really twangy sound almost like an aluminum guitar and great neck feel

I'll try out some different octave units next time I'm in Montreal (October) and let you guys know what I think