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Octave/Pitch pedals with Midi control

Pedalnetics

Pedalnetics

Supporting Member
Commercial User
Dec 11, 2016
1,349
3,835
Omaha, Nebraska
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Pedalnetics
#1
Looking for any pedals I may have missed in my search, or opinions on the ones I have found for this situation/context.

I have an HX Effects to run 99% of what I want. The two things missing from it are EHX Freeze (got that), and a good pitch/octave changer. (Yes it has a pitch effect, but I've never thought it sounded as good as even a simple Sub N' Up).

Ideally I'd find a smaller Pitch/Octave pedal (Up & Down, track to a Low B) with midi control, so I don't have to fiddle with apps or knobs mid-worship-service. I have a great midi controller and an expression pedal connected, so all I really need is a pedal with brains to program.

What I've found so far is:
  • Eventide PitchFactor (rather large, but basically does exactly what I want)
  • Eventide H9 with Pitch algorithms (the current winner so far; PitchFactor effect in smaller package; buy a Core and only buy the Pitch algos to keep cost down?)
  • Bass Whammy (I don't NEED the pedal, think I'd rather drop extra $ for the H9's size?). I even looked up pictures to see if I could strip the pedal/move to a smaller enclosure, but the circuit board takes up most the space internally it seems
  • TC Plethora X5 - way overboard, I need 1 small thing, not a huge new 5 channel FX unit. Too bad they dont make a Plethora X1 w/midi
  • Source Audio C4 - heard it can do some octave/pitch shifting, but for the price + midi integration box, H9 makes more sense
And...that's it? Really surprised EHX didn't put midi on the PitchFork Plus, that probably would have been the winner otherwise.
 
#5
GMC said:
I have several on my board, the Eventide H9’s (I use a pair), the Source Audio C4 and the EHX Hog 2.
Click to expand...

I have tried a Hog2, forgot about that beast when I was looking for midi-Freeze functionality. For the size, I wasn't excited about its sound. It could have been my failure of using its controls/settings, but I never could get a clean non-synthy octave up/down out of it.
 
#6
Pedalnetics said:
I have tried a Hog2, forgot about that beast when I was looking for midi-Freeze functionality. For the size, I wasn't excited about its sound. It could have been my failure of using its controls/settings, but I never could get a clean non-synthy octave up/down out of it.
Click to expand...
It excel in organ sounds, general octave sounds. However, it's also got a lot of additional features (such as the slow attack sliders that are pretty unique) and it's freeze, gliss, wah and volume expression over midi are excellent. It offers some very strong organ sounds as well as some great cello / bowed and mellow tones that I can't easily get anywhere else. It's a huge panel and takes up a lot of board real estate, so I buried mine under a board tier and I pretty much use it via midi...calling specific patches.
 
#9
sillyfabe said:


Here is a demo of myself using a HOG2 with open string octave bends tuned F#BEA
Click to expand...


Awesome, thanks for that video! I watched/clicked through it a few times, and it matches my memory pretty well: theres a synthy sound to the octave, and especially that lower B and F# octave up have a 'warble' to them at the top of the sweep. I think that solidifies going back to a Hog2 isnt my answer for this endeavour.

I'm hoping to find something that's a "cleaner" sound in a smaller format; that Hedra still looks promising, wish there was more non-fancy bass demos of it's pure/clean sounds, guess that might be my duty to make :smug:
 

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