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Hunting down the right octaver.

Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2012 6:04 pm
by jaywar
I'm looking for an octaver that's similar to the (micro)POG. I just lost an ebay bid on one of those and thought I'd take the opportunity to explore other options. I want something to add some beef to parts of songs cause I'm the only guitarist in my current band. The main thing I'm looking for is something that can handle chords. Not pretty pristine organ-like chords, but gnarly noisey wall of sound chords. Ive looked at the POG, the Whammy, and the ZCat polyoctaver which looks pretty promising but I'm not finding a whole lot about it.
My current chain is DS1>Mastatron>DispatchMaster>DD7

Re: Hunting down the right octaver.

Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2012 6:59 pm
by Dark Barn
Impostor!

Re: Hunting down the right octaver.

Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2012 7:10 pm
by the Life Aquatic
ilf's first case of identity theft.

Re: Hunting down the right octaver.

Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2012 7:14 pm
by jrmy
Impostor or not, if you're looking for organ-ish octaves, you probably want to look at this: http://www.earthquakerdevices.com/shop/organizer/

Because, frankly, that's exactly what it was designed for.

Re: Hunting down the right octaver.

Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2012 7:23 pm
by jaywar
Am I doomed from the start for this username? Dammit.......

I've checked out the organizer a bit, I love my dispatch master from EQD. I'm not quite looking for an organ-replicator though, closer to the pog or polyoctaver that'll just track chords alright without necessarily sounding too synthy.

Re: Hunting down the right octaver.

Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2012 7:31 pm
by Scruffie
If you hang about for a month or two, the Mooer Pure Octave should be out, they're cheap chinese pedals but pretty cool (and tiny!) it has more options than the micro pog, obviously gunna have to wait and see how it sounds though but judging by there harmonizer demos, i'm betting decent enough for the cost.

Re: Hunting down the right octaver.

Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2012 7:35 pm
by jaywar
That looks awesome! guess I'll have to wait a minute. Saves me some cash in the mean time.

Re: Hunting down the right octaver.

Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2012 9:28 pm
by Scruffie
jaywar wrote:That looks awesome! guess I'll have to wait a minute. Saves me some cash in the mean time.

Well I think all there other pedals go for $88 on ebay so i'm assuming (and hoping) it'll be the same!

Don't think you'll be waiting long for them to come out ;)

Re: Hunting down the right octaver.

Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2012 9:38 pm
by sylnau
Are you a friend of jwar? :lol:

There is two type of ocraver... monophonic (Octron, OC-2, OC-3, Polyanna, Octabass ...) and polyphonic (POG, MicroPOG, Organizer).
Poly will track chord, mono won't. Poly sound like cheap synth to my ear, mono sound rich and organic... but that's me.
Another things... if you like fuzz, MicroPOG won't do it for you because of it's buffer.

I've heard good things about the OctaBass from EBS... If you only need octave down.
From EBS website:
The pedal also recognizes two or three-note chords and trigger the lowest note. Control the level of the original tone and mix in the octave effect.

That's about it. The perfect octaver doesn't exist at the moment. :)

Re: Hunting down the right octaver.

Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2012 9:49 pm
by Scruffie
sylnau wrote:Are you a friend of jwar? :lol:

There is two type of ocraver... monophonic (Octron, OC-2, OC-3, Polyanna, Octabass ...) and polyphonic (POG, MicroPOG, Organizer).
Poly will track chord, mono won't. Poly sound like cheap synth to my ear, mono sound rich and organic... but that's me.
Another things... if you like fuzz, MicroPOG won't do it for you because of it's buffer.

I've heard good things about the OctaBass from EBS... If you only need octave down.
From EBS website:
The pedal also recognizes two or three-note chords and trigger the lowest note. Control the level of the original tone and mix in the octave effect.

That's about it. The perfect octaver doesn't exist at the moment. :)

This man dreams of octaves he will never find :p

The best bet for you Sylanu is to have an DELUXE Octave Multiplexer, it was an 80s version they didn't reissue, that is the best tracking of any analog octave downs of all time pretty much because it gets the closest at producing a sine wave from a guitar signal, can even just about get some chord tracking out of it, it's extremley complicated to do so though. It would be possible to tap off from the circuitry that makes the octave down track so well in it to add an octave up though. Oh and it had fuzz built in too in some models.

I find fuzz and micro pog fine, depends what you're using and your signal chain (pre micro pog fuzz shouldn't care too much) not sure if the Pog II has a buffer or not... i'm gunna guess they'd moved that design to relay based true bypass.

The Micro pog is perfect for 'Gnarly tones' as he mentions, running an Elements in to it can get some great industrial tones I found.

Octaves will always be difficult, guitar designs just make them that way, extracting a fundamental note and transposing it as those digital octavers do is just what we have to deal with untill things progress further. And square wavey analog octaves with some nuances is the other side.

Anyway, I think the Mooer looks cool for the presumed price if it ends up tracking decently.

Re: Hunting down the right octaver.

Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2012 9:58 pm
by sylnau
Never heard of that DELUXE... thanks... really interesting.

Something awesome should come out this year from a cool builder... I don't have much info on it... so I won't tell more.

Re: Hunting down the right octaver.

Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2012 10:03 pm
by Scruffie
sylnau wrote:Never heard of that DELUXE... thanks... really interesting.

Something awesome should come out this year from a cool builder... I don't have much info on it... so I won't tell more.

That wasn't meant to be agressive btw, I was just too lazy to hit the Italics button to distinguish between deluxe and the standard lol.

Interesting, we shall wait and see... btw regards analog, I assume you've checked out the Pearl Octaver? Quite nice for what it is regards analog octave, upper octave sucks a bit but you can mod it to be more pronounced, albeit fuzzier.

Re: Hunting down the right octaver.

Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2012 10:08 pm
by sylnau
Never tried Pearl.

I tried...
-POG 2 at a store
-MicroPOG (didn't work for me)
-Octron (it was almost awesome... don't really know why I sold it) (I made a jwar out of me... :lol: )
-OctaSynth

Re: Hunting down the right octaver.

Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2012 10:30 pm
by ryan summit
why am i the only one that ever mentions the boss PS
is it because its a PieceaShit
i dont think so, but its debateable wether im a pieceashit,
i use it for exactly what your talkin about
its just me and drums
shit fills in all the gaps, especially the three voice
th PS 6 is what i got, and supposedly fixed the probs of the other PS's
i like it better than the whammy

Re: Hunting down the right octaver.

Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2012 10:33 pm
by sylnau
ryan summit wrote:why am i the only one that ever mentions the boss PS
is it because its a PieceaShit
i dont think so, but its debateable wether im a pieceashit,
i use it for exactly what your talkin about
its just me and drums
shit fills in all the gaps, especially the three voice
th PS 6 is what i got, and supposedly fixed the probs of the other PS's
i like it better than the whammy

Whammy and PS are harmonizer... not octave.