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Pedalboards Using Ocatve-Up Effects For Guitar Doubling

TMFoodBass

TMFoodBass

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Feb 24, 2012
155
76
Adamstown, PA
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#1
Just thought I'd put some feelers out there to see who else is doing or would like to do this. Show pedalboards. Also suggestions for different effects that sound good being used in this way. Not sure if this should be a club or not...

Personally, I'm thinking about doing this with my church band. Our electric guitarist is leaving at the end of the year, leaving only drummer, acoustic guitarist, and me in addition to vocalists. Thought that this might be a way to thicken things up at times. Thinking about using the Digitech Bass Whammy as the octave up pedal.

Any input in this vein would be awesome.
 
#2
Hi,

I was previously playing in a trio, doing mostly rock covers. From time to time (during guitar solos etc.) I had to fill up more sonic space. One trick I used was an octave pedal (T-Rex Octavius) using the octave up. It worked in the sense that it filled up the sonic space more, however it never sounded like a guitar (and even less like a guitar and bass playing at once), which made me rethink and try other things to make the sound more dense (not necessarily trying to sound like an additional guitar).

Additional things that could work:
- Playing chords or double stops higher up on the neck.
- Increase bass presence by either a boost pedal (volume) or an overdrive (thickens the sound). An eq pedal could also work in a similar way.
- Increase the time of played notes through a chorus or, to a larger extent, with a delay.

Nowadays I'm trying to setup a solo project with recorded loops, where I would like some parts of what I record to mimic a guitar sound. In this case I don't wan't to make it sound like a bass and guitar at once, but rather have the bass sound like a guitar only (overdubbing the previously recorded "bass parts"). And I've found out that the octave pedal isn't the best way to sound like a guitar. Using an EQ and cutting low frequencies and increasing some high mid frequencies, is much more convincing. An even better way (and where I'm currently at) is using a bi-amp setup, where you can switch output and run the bass through a guitar amp.

I don't think the latter of what I was describing is what you're aiming for though.

YMMV

Cheers,
Kalle
 
#3
Thanks for the input!

What I'm interested in is something similar to what Jeff Kerestes from Apollo Run does. See video link below



Yeah, it's not a great mimic of a guitar sound. But it is in the guitar tonal register, and when supplemented with some effects (mainly some fuzz), it adds something very cool. Especially for any lead parts, and in my group I do play a significant amount of lead. Maybe I need to try the second suggestion...
 
#4
I'm in a unique situation, but I do this. My bass/guitar is like Charlie Hunter's, low EAD go to bass pickup, high ADGB go to guitar pickup. Each goes out to a respective bass or guitar pedal chain and amp. One important deviation I make is that the bridge pickup spans across all 7 strings, so it picks up the low "bass" strings as well, When I have the pickup selector switched to the neck, I get full separation of the two signals; when I switch to the bridge pickup, the 3 bass strings go out to the bass amp via the bass pickup AND to the guitar amp via the bridge pickup.

Because it is going through a different pickup, pickup position, and amp it already sounds more guitar-like, but I'll often kick in my Bass Whammy on that signal as well. When I'm running through the POD HD500 I'll also add in some very subtle delay to give the impression of even more separation of the 2 signals.

I'll try to get some pics of my setup and maybe even a video soon.
 
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#7
I've seen video clips of Royal Blood before and have always liked the sound he gets out of his bass set up. Unfortunately for me I'm lazy and don't want to go through that amount of trouble. :D

I think I'm one of the few people around who has a T-Rex Quint Machine. The "pro" reviews seemed to be generally positive, but the few "average Joe" reviews I found seemed to be more negative than positive. But the pedal seemed to fit my needs so I gave it a try. I was primarily looking for a way to produce a power chord (I wanted the 5th above and octave above) and, unless I spent a lot more money, that seemed to be my only choice. Somewhat luckily I found a B-stock model at Musician's Friend so I got a nice discount on it and it arrived looking brand new.

Honestly, my opinion of it is mixed. It can sound synth-y when you raise the level the 5th and even more synth-y when you raise the level of the octave above, plus the lag for the affected pitches is kind of noticeable. If I was using it strictly as a pitch shifter, I wouldn't keep it. But it does seem to do a tolerable job of the "power chord" effect that I wanted - as long as I keep the levels of the 5th and octave a little lower than the dry signal level. Subtlety is definitely the key to using to using it in this application. And, FWIW, I find the lag can actually help fill out the "power chord" effect, but I also notice the effect sounds better when I play simpler, less busy lines. I also find other effects can muddy it up as well, so I don't use it with distortion, etither. Again, subtlety is the key.

If I was in a situation like Royal Blood, then I doubt the Quint would be good enough. However, it's not an effect I use often, only when our two guitarists play a solo in unison or they play harmony solos. In that application, it seems to be a minimal trouble, acceptable solution. At this point, my band is just working on building up enough material to start playing out, so I'm only using it for practice now. We'll see if/how my opinion of the Quint changes if we eventually do start playing out.

FWIW, I haven't had a need to use the octave below and I haven't played with it much. So I can't really offer much of an opinion on that function.
 
#8
I'm in a three piece band. At one of our shows, the guitarist couldn't make it, so the drummer and I took the stage without him. I basically played bass and sang all of my songs, which took up the full set. We pulled it off without making complete asses of ourselves, though I probably wouldn't want to go through that again. After that experience, I stumbled upon Royal Blood. They're an interesting band, but I'm not that into them. I picked up real quick what that guy was using and soon picked up a brand new POG-2. The amount of different settings is pretty wild, but there are a lot of standard settings that you can download from the website. What I've come to realize is that you need to increase the dry signal to keep more "bass" sounding tones in the mix. Paired up with my Red Ripper, I've managed to get rather nice, not too overpowering, fuzzed out guitar tones.
I think pairing up the POG with some other effects is the key to imitating a guitar, and as others have pointed out, you might want to split the signal to guitar amp. I'm too lazy to do that though.
 
#9
I split my singal....use a micro pog set octave up in conjunction with a treble booster and run into either a Dirty little secret pedal/ or a Sabra Cadabra pedal into a slightly dirty guitar amp...wont pass as a guitar standing alone...but in the mix it gets the job done
 
#13
I have a boss ls-2 with a nano pog and a sans amp gt2 in a loop. play in a one guitar band. It works pretty nicely if you want to do it without a second amp and just want have one channel to foh for easy live use.

I do like the gt2 more direct (without going into the bass pre) , I can connect the dry out of my sans amp rbi to pog and then the gt2 and use any number of pedals as as killswitch to kick it in and out. This is what I am planning to do in the studio next go round.

For live use I like it in the loop of the ls-2 because I can get a a few different sounds with this combination of pedals. Pog on with gt2 off for octave up or down, gt2 on with pog off with the ls-2 as a blend for a distorted bass/8 or 9 string guitar type of vibe. Or both on for the fake guitar doubling. This can be tweaked further by how I set the pog. When I just want that royal blood type of vibe I crank the octave up and have the dry and sub octave nearly off. But I can also have the pog sending the dry octave and octave up into the gt2 for an octave guitar mixed with clean bass type of vibe. That is a really massive sound but I have to turn the volume down on the gt2 to keep my amp from clipping
 

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