Boss OC-2 "Synth Mod"?

[Bryan R. Tyler]

Anyone tried this?

Just saw it tonight and it sounded pretty cool.

 

[Taylor Livingston]

I built myself an OC-2-style octave pedal awhile ago, and while poking around the circuit with an audio probe, discovered the square wave lurking in there. It's a cool sound, but if you just mod an OC-2, there's no VCA or gate to make the square wave shut off when you're not playing, so it continues to oscillate even when you aren't playing anything. So what I did with mine was add a gate that follows the input envelope. A cool sound for sure.

 

[Bryan R. Tyler]

I assumed that it was just oscillating at around :32 of the first video. Can a gate even fit into an OC-2 enclosure?

 

[Taylor Livingston]

Yeah, the way the OC-2 works is that it creates that square wave that's an octave or 2 octaves below the input, then uses the octave square wave to cut the input signal on and off. So in normal functioning, you're not meant to ever hear the square itself, which is why there's no gate circuitry there.

I honestly don't know if there's room in the Boss enclosure for the gate, as I built mine in a Hammond box. It's possible to build a pretty small gate circuit that would do the job - you don't need full envelope following, just an on/off affair.

The real fun starts when you use the octave down square wave as the carrier in a ring modulator...

 

[Albibass]

Haha, the second clip would be great for those 8-Bit songs!

 

[Bryan R. Tyler]

Cool info, Taylor. If you're ever interested in making a few bucks doing that mod or even poking around in one to see if a gate will fit, let me know