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Octave pedal for more beef?

#21
seriously, the guitar player is doing your job with his octave pedal. You won't be able to do anything of any consequence until he turns that off.
You can go below him, but you'll end up in the subs, competing with the kick drum. That's a battle you'll never win.
You and guitarist playing together should sound close to indistinguishable from him playing with his octave pedal on (depending upon style and structure of the music).
Get him to axe the octave pedal. That's the only way you'll get anywhere.
 
#23
MilesOnline said:
So this is my first time posting.

I recently joined a sludge doom band, and in practice I feel I can't compete with our guitarist in the sense of beef.
He's running an sg with dual humbuckers out of an all tube b52 amp and uses a digitec whammy with his down two octave enabled.
He's ****ing low and heavy!

I'm looking for an octave pedal that will allow me to do the same, drop down an octave or two per note. I've read allot of reviews but I want somthing that will play nice with my other pedals. I don't want to use the octave for distortion, I already get my dirt from a swollen pickle for the fuzz and a boss bass overdrive for my OD. I'm playing a fretless ibanez soundgear with dual humbuckers out of an ampeg 200w micro hooked up to an 2x15 acoustic cab that I replaced the speakers for a pair of jbl 140's

Any advice?
Click to expand...

Welcome to TB.

Just for a test - at your next rehearsal, turn your bass amp volume completely off while continuing to pretend playing and see if your guitarist even notices - and report back.
 
#26
I actually like bass with an octave up effect for doomy music. An octave down on anything other than high notes will sound like mush and two octaves will either fail to track, be ridiculously difficult to hear, destroy your speakers, or all three.

I disagree that he needs to turn his octave completely off. I play with a guitarist that uses an octave pedal often and I never compete with him. What you may need is a different octave type pedal for his guitar where he can only blend in a small amount of octave and possibly alter the octave tone so that it's more in the guitar range (aguilar and mxr have pedals that do this).

The short answer is this. If you try and fix this problem by throwing more volume and more low end at it you'll cost yourself money and probably not get any further. You said you like your guitarists tone but is that when he's playing alone or with the band? If he's taking all your sonic space in the mix then his tone needs to change. Have him take some low end out of his tone and explain that it will be replaced by the bass. Yes, the guitar may sound less powerful on its own but when the bass comes in it will be a much fuller sound overall.
 
#28
So here is an update on the situation,
last night in practice his amp got crazy hot and smelled of electrical fire.
He thinks the super low octaves mixed with the heavy tube distortion being played super loud is hurting his amp. So no more octave playing.
Also I sat down and really just messed around with my sound for a good hour and found a sound I like with my pedal combo, although I think I'm gonna play clean for a good portion of our set. I'm also going to looking into a bigger amp. Most likely and ampeg svt
Thank you guys very much! You have all been extremely helpful!
 
#35
Swift713 said:
Maybe you should use piccolo strings and an octave up so you can fill the upper register that your guitarist had abandoned.
Click to expand...

That's exactly what I was thinking. Play in the upper registers, dial in some nice dirt and start soloing...see your guitarist frown and then re-evaluate their register....then go back to playing regular bass and guitar slots in the mix :D
 

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