octave pedal

[koko276]

any one got any ideas or experience that will aid in choosing a good octave pedal? I am looking to get one although I have never used one, a friend of mine has a boss OC3 he says he doesn't like because it "warbles" what ever that means. Any input would be helpfull.

[batflash]

I second that request. Any suggestions? I've heard some of Zvex's stuff, but still want to hear more demos or suggestions.

Koko in case you haven't heard the Zvex stuff, check it out. Http://www.zvex.com

They've got great demos.

Bats

[duosonicboy]

Zvex's stuff is more geared towards uniqueness then controllability, IMO. Most octave pedals, especially the BOSS and Whammy, are really good.
It's mostly technique that determines how good the octave is - try the neck pickup with the tone turned down a little and practice developing a very even, distinct attack so yr playing can be tracked easily. When I first starting using the MXR blue box (not at all a good octave!) I practiced keeping my attack as clean as possible, specifically not hitting more then one string at a time. With practice, even a crummy octave-down can work well!
And Zvex's demos are the bees knees - even my non musician friends love 'em.

[benitosuave]

i have never played an octave pedal of any type but I am very skeptical that I would like it because they have to synthesize the tones, meaning that you are not getting your nice guitar tone, you are getting a synthesized tone and guitar tone mixed.

[sumgai]

benito,

First, welcome to the Forums! ;D

......... they have to synthesize the tones ........

Not quite true. Cutting frequencies in half, or doubling them, has long been child's play in the analog world, no synthesis needed. The only way the tone is affected is the shifting of the signal's entire harmonic content, that can't be avoided, sorry to say.

HTH


sumgai

[benitosuave]

ah okay I didn't know that. I suppose in retrospect when I was reading about the digitech whammy it mentioned the word "synthesize" and so I jumped to the conclusion that they were not replications of the original tone.

[sumgai]

benito,

Actually, within the Digitech Whammy, there is some very sophisticated processing going on. I have one, and it turns out that they are digitizing the incoming signal, then applying some very high-order mathematical transformations to said converted signal. The processor in question (at least on mine) is an old Zilog Z-80, clocking in at 2MHz, and it has what looks like either 2Megs or 4Megs of RAM. That's plenty enough horsepower to accomplish the mission.

We could get into a deep discussion, I'm sure, about what consititutes synthesis, but I'm not inclined to hijack this topic. I accept that most people believe that once you're in digital territory, anything that comes out is synthesized. I'm not quite that loose about it, but that's OK, no one really cares about the nit-picky details, eh? ;D

HTH


sumgai

[benitosuave]

haha yeah thats cool. I just know that it is easy for stompboxes to hijack great guitar/amp tone