Pedals you wanted ...until you tried them.

[SteveC]

All of them...except my tuner and my YYZ.

 

[Xjenrbcjsmsbfjw]

Every octave pedal ever made.

Haha, I don't know if I've ever liked an octave pedal solo. For my money they are part of a pedal combo when you are trying to get synth sounds, or things like that. They sell an awful lot of those guys though, so we must be the minority.

 

[Xjenrbcjsmsbfjw]

I'm going to give a very qualified answer of "a few darkglass pedals," I really like them, I just think in comparrison with what is out there, they are just overpriced. I keep wanting to come upon that mystical sound that will make them so much better than the other random equivalents, but I just can't find it. If they are ever half off though, I'm there in a second.

 

[Bassheart365]

The new Source Audio C4. I'm officially off the bandwagon. Lots of interesting synthy sounds. But I did not find a single community bass synth preset usable in a live performance situation. Same with every other synth pedal I've ever purchased - including the Enzo, Matryoshka, and Pigtronics Mothership 2 - with the exception of my Future Impact.

 

[Brilave]

Title says it , really.
I'm interested to hear about those situations when you felt that you wanted a certain pedal, until you tried it. After trying it you no longer wanted the pedal.

I'll start;
Dwarfcraft: 'The great destroyer' - I just lacked the patience and time to find settings and sounds that would have been useful or interesting to me.

Before trying it, I nearly bought it.

1) Pog. Sounds like a church organ
2. Behringer BEQ700 Eq. Noisy, and had a mind of its own. Bought a Boss, which is perfect.

 

[zontar]

They sell an awful lot of those guys though, so we must be the minority.

Might be.
But that's okay--it's music--it's good if we go for different sounds.

 

[cavemanbass]

I'm with you, but only for "digital octave-up." From the Wammy to the Boss Pitch Shifters to the POG series - I *want* an octave-up so much, and I have disliked them all.

I've heard other people make them work - but they've never been a good call for me at all.

Same here... even high end pedals that people claim gives them the sound of an 8 string bass... the octave up sounds like crap (to me). That includes the Eventide H9, Pitchfactor, EH micro POG, TC Sub n' Up.
One caveat - back in the day with my Roland V-Bass, there was one patch that just used octave up plus some basic effects - wish I had paid more attention cause I can't remember how the patch was built. Maybe some delay, reverb, a bit of overdrive. Anyway, it made my bass sound like Pat Metheny with his Roland GR300. Very sweet sustaining lead tone. Only good for leads (probably obvious) though would be interesting to blend with a clean sound at regular pitch. Pitchfactor has something similar. But, as far as just plain octave up without any digital artifacts, I have not found it. Would love to hear from anyone that has...

 

[TrevorOfDoom]

Dr. Scientist The Elements
Any Big Muff
MXR Bass Distortion
Supro Fuzz
Foxpedal Defector Fuzz
EHX Bass Soul Food
TCE SpectraComp
Supro Drive
Bananana Matryoshka

All were good pedals, but everything is subjective.

 

[cosmicevan]

Dr. Scientist The Elements

Really....been reading a bit about this one and it had caught my attention.

 

[vvvmmm]

Same here... even high end pedals that people claim gives them the sound of an 8 string bass... the octave up sounds like crap (to me).

That's why I play a 8-string bass when I want that sound .

 

[TrevorOfDoom]

Really....been reading a bit about this one and it had caught my attention.

It has a lot of knobs, which I normally have an aversion against.
There were a lot of good sounds in there, and i did dig a lot of them, but my favourite was a setting that replicated my Acapulco Gold. So no need to keep both.
I'd suggest trying it, as i think it'll kill for a lot of folks.
My needs are/were a touch too specific, methinks.

 

[acleex38]

That's why I play a 8-string bass when I want that sound .

Sadly, I sold my 8-string bass in 2003 to pay down an Amex card. I've been kicking myself since 2006, when I started playing with other people on a regular basis.

 

[Fuzzbass]

Irony alert: all the fuzz pedals I've owned. Took me decades to accept the reality that I prefer distortion (especially stacked distortions) to true fuzz for heavy bass tones.

But I've been using this username on various forums since the early internet, so I'm sticking with it.

 

[acleex38]

Irony alert: all the fuzz pedals I've owned. Took me decades to accept the reality that I prefer distortion (especially stacked distortions) to true fuzz for heavy bass tones.

But I've been using this username on various forums since the early internet, so I'm sticking with it.

I was just thinking this (almost) exact thing. I love fuzz no other people's bass tone, but I've always struggled with it, at least in guitar-heavy rock bands. I realized that the scenarios where I like fuzz bass are frequently more open mixes (Robert Sledge with "Ben Folds Five", Marc Friedman's octave-fuzz with "The Slip", etc.).

No clean blend = lost in the mix
Clean blend = the dirty signal gets gets mixed in with the guitarists' dirt and I might as well not have it on.

The secret may be "play with fewer guitarists".

 

[vvvmmm]

The secret may be "play with fewer guitarists".

Or, mostly only use it when the guitars aren't too distorted.

 

[BurningSkies]

The new Source Audio C4. I'm officially off the bandwagon. Lots of interesting synthy sounds. But I did not find a single community bass synth preset usable in a live performance situation. Same with every other synth pedal I've ever purchased - including the Enzo, Matryoshka, and Pigtronics Mothership 2 - with the exception of my Future Impact.

Just the opposite for me. I'm finding the C4 has a whole lot to offer me without even the 'synth' part involved, and I haven't even had the time to dive into the synth side of it. I feel like the 'community' patches are guys just trying to get to grips with what it can do and there's a lot of novelty junk in there. I do expect that stuff will sink to the bottom of the pool and the good stuff that IS functional will eventually remain. Right now it's on the board and getting more use than my FI.

I couldn't get the Matryoshka to be functional in a live setting. The sensitivity control on it was fairly useless with my Dingwalls, and many of the sounds were variants on the typical bass-synth-processed-fart sound.

For me pedals that are too tweaky and you can't SAVE a sound does me very little good. With that in mind, my nomination for a pedal that sort of blew me away but wasn't at all functional is the Red Panda Particle. SOOO much potential and even a tiny errant movement of a knob and your chosen sound was ruined...much less forget about trying to dial it in to any options on stage. It was literally on my board for less than a week.

 

[Spectre1966]

Spectracomp

 

[Bassheart365]

Just the opposite for me. I'm finding the C4 has a whole lot to offer me without even the 'synth' part involved, and I haven't even had the time to dive into the synth side of it. I feel like the 'community' patches are guys just trying to get to grips with what it can do and there's a lot of novelty junk in there. I do expect that stuff will sink to the bottom of the pool and the good stuff that IS functional will eventually remain. Right now it's on the board and getting more use than my FI.

I couldn't get the Matryoshka to be functional in a live setting. The sensitivity control on it was fairly useless with my Dingwalls, and many of the sounds were variants on the typical bass-synth-processed-fart sound.

For me pedals that are too tweaky and you can't SAVE a sound does me very little good. With that in mind, my nomination for a pedal that sort of blew me away but wasn't at all functional is the Red Panda Particle. SOOO much potential and even a tiny errant movement of a knob and your chosen sound was ruined...much less forget about trying to dial it in to any options on stage. It was literally on my board for less than a week.

Since my post I did a 180 and the C4 is back on my board. Spend most of yesterday going through the community presets and found a couple that I tweeked a bit and will be using with my band. My octaver is now replaced, but I will keep my Future Impact on the board along with the C4. Both have unique capabilities and sounds. But that's another topic...

 

[jdc866]

Same here... even high end pedals that people claim gives them the sound of an 8 string bass... the octave up sounds like crap (to me). That includes the Eventide H9, Pitchfactor, EH micro POG, TC Sub n' Up.
One caveat - back in the day with my Roland V-Bass, there was one patch that just used octave up plus some basic effects - wish I had paid more attention cause I can't remember how the patch was built. Maybe some delay, reverb, a bit of overdrive. Anyway, it made my bass sound like Pat Metheny with his Roland GR300. Very sweet sustaining lead tone. Only good for leads (probably obvious) though would be interesting to blend with a clean sound at regular pitch. Pitchfactor has something similar. But, as far as just plain octave up without any digital artifacts, I have not found it. Would love to hear from anyone that has...

I’ve heard good things about the 3 leaf audio octabvre but I’ve yet to try it. Although in thinking about it, I imagine any octave pedal will inherently sound a bit digital...it’s a digital tone relative to the input, so would be hard to have a non-digital tone in the octaves.

Thought I’d mention it as I haven’t seen that pedal in this thread yet

 

[cavemanbass]

I’ve heard good things about the 3 leaf audio octabvre but I’ve yet to try it. Although in thinking about it, I imagine any octave pedal will inherently sound a bit digital...it’s a digital tone relative to the input, so would be hard to have a non-digital tone in the octaves.

Thought I’d mention it as I haven’t seen that pedal in this thread yet

Nowadays lots of digital devices that don’t sound ‘digital’ - ie amp modelers like the Line6 HX. Though I suspect its octave up does have those digital artifacts (I’ve heard the HX but have not tried one on bass); I don’t know why octave up is such a tough problem to solve.
Octabvre btw seems to be analog octave down. Gets a lot of accolades here on TB.