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GASing for a new pedal. Octaver?

#21
You may find that kicking in an octave effect during a guitar solo will just call too much attention to the bass and 'ruin' the solo rather than support it.

I personally like the sound of a 'doubled' effect with my OC-2, but LOTS of people use it with the 'direct' sound at 0 using only the synthy octave sound. All a matter of taste. I think it sounds cool, but haven't found a use for it in the context of my band yet.

-JV
 
#22
In other news...if you find yourself doing 80s cover tunes (like we all seem to be doing more of), an octaver might be a good tool. There are a lot of quintessential 80s basslines that use one.

Sledgehammer, Need You Tonight, and Let's Dance are all in our cover list and I use an octaver on all of them, for example.
 
#23
scottfeldstein said:
It's looking like it'll be a while (Spring perhaps) before I can get the new bass I want (Ibanez SR505), so... my GAS attack has moved on to the pedal board.

I'm pretty new to pedal effects, but I've been really enjoying my MXR envelope filter. And now that I've downsized my SansAmp bass driver DI to the non-programmable one, and reclaimed 3 inches of my board, I think I could squeeze another small pedal in there.

I would really, really like to get something synthy sounding, but after reading a lot of reviews and listening to a lot of stuff on youtube, I don't think I'm going to be happy until I buy a $250 tripple-sized, extremely complicated unit. And that's not what I can afford or fit right now, so...

Octaver?

Could be pretty cool to thicken things up a bit when the guitarist in my 3-piece band goes for a solo. I could play my riff an octave up and have the pedal put a low one on top of it.

Also, I'm interested in how I might use it in conjunction with the envelope filter. Could be pretty cool.

I have read some reviews (here) and listened to some youtube demos with my headphones on and... so far the MXR 288 Bass Octave Deluxe is looking like a frontrunner. (Their whole "Bass Innovations" line is really pretty awesome.) But there's also the Aguilar Octamizer. If I had to choose right now, I'd go MXR. I see Markbass has a new octaver out, too. There aren't any demos to listen to that I can find. Plus, it goes one and TWO octaves below your signal. Not sure if I can dig that. I could see if it went one below and one ABOVE. But two below?

Anyway. Thoughts on how you use your octaver in a band situation? Preferences on brands/models?
Click to expand...

I'm waiting on my M288 right now, which I plan to use to fatten up certain passages with my 3 piece cover band.
 
#26
DWBass said:
I want the dedicated analog pedals (Octave Deluxe, Envelope Filter, Compressor).
Click to expand...

I already have the envelope filter and the compressor. Both brilliant. The EF is top notch for classic EV sounds (no reverse sweeps or distortions or square wave synths, etc.). The compressor is transparent, effective and dead-simple to use.

I am definitely aware that some knowledgeable folks prefer the other octavers, but what I'm hearing on youtube demos leads me right to the MXR--again. YMMV, of course.
 
#27
For a certain soundscape project I do (clips at New York Soundscapes by DoggieWoof -if you ask "where's the bass", then that's exactly the point ;-) I have at the core a regular Digitech Whammy going into a Ashdown Sub Octave ($40 on ebay). Distortions, phasers and so on, all come after that.

The Ashdown is different form regular octavers in that its octave effect serves to fatten the overall sound, which works perfect in this case. For example, the Whammy 2 octaves up > Sub bass > distortion next in the chain = what I consider a perfect Bernie Worrell-type fart synth solo sound (clip #5) .

Hope this helps to give you an idea.
 

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