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Question about up octavers!

G

Guimdonatron

Jul 4, 2009
297
10
Lake Charles, LA
#1
So I am looking at getting into using pedals to push myself as a bassist into the realm of playing two parts at once. I won't get into all of the details since it's rather tedious, but nevertheless, I'm looking to split my signal into two chains.

The first chain would maintain the lowend groove so either clean signal or lowend effects (xerograph, mammoth, oc-2, etc.) while the second chain is for doing experimental sounds. Part of the experiment is to run a pedal with octave up or two octave up and run that through delays, ring mods, oscillators, etc.

Anyhow, I'm looking for a solid pedal to do this that can project the effect without any clean signal beneath it (since that would be going on in the first signal). At most I would want the option to put an OC-2 for an octave down on the first signal and a two octave up on the second signal giving me a three octave difference.

I'm not wanting the Whammy since it is so big and with it being jam packed with features I feel it would be a waste to run only octave up(s).

Would the Boss PS-5 pull this job off nicely? Does anyone have experience using the octave and two octave up on bass?

And I don't care about the "digital" sound since it will be running through tons of effects it won't even matter. I care about it not glitching constantly and not tracking.

If anyone has any ideas, let me know. I'd also rather not break my bank on this pedal and doesn't break the pedal board space! Hahaha.

Thanks again for any help! Much appreciated!!
 
#4
If you get a ringmod up - like an Octavia or Armstrong Green Ringer, or the Pigtronix Disnortion's Octave channel - and then add a clean blend and mix THAT with your octave down you just might get something you'll want to keep.

BYOC makes the 'armstrong twin' kits that have a ringmod octave up. I was surprised how great it works with bass but can kick it in and still have a bunch of great girth and presence.

Wish I had a blend for it.
 
#7
Swift713 said:
The Micro Pog is the best/cheapest octave up for your purposes.
Click to expand...

+2 on the Micro POG. I own it and it tracks beautifully. The octave up has an organ like quality to it but it sounds awesome IMO. The octave down is a little murky but if you get the right blend, one of the knobs is blend, it's works smashingly. Check it out on YouTube if you're not to familiar with it. Great pedal.
 
#9
I would recommend you just get a pod hd. I used pedals and switched to using the pod as just an effects processor(no amp modeling) with my main rig. For complicated sounds that involve multiple effects being turned on and off at once individual pedals became a nightmare. The pod hd desktop, 500, and pro all have all the m class effects which includes a whammy sim. And the nice thing about the pod is I can adjust the blend of the whammy in 1% increments. So if I want a 50% blend of the whammy and my actual bass tone I can. And really I use a different blend % for ever different sound I use for the whammy sim. Sometimes its 100% for half pitch bending to basically put the whole bass in a different tuning. Sometimes ill use it at 50% when using octave up. And ill even use it with an octave down whammy or bass octave at about 10% just to add low harmonic content.
 
#10
Swift713 said:
The Micro Pog is the best/cheapest octave up for your purposes.
Click to expand...

Darknut said:
Absolutely +1
Click to expand...
+3 since gregmon also gave it a +1
Laurent said:
The EH Bass micro synth does octave up and octave down.
After going through several octave down pedals this ended up being my favorite.
Highly recommended, this pedal is a trip.
Click to expand...

The Bass microsynth isn't polyphonic, so it may not work for what he wants. I think the microsynth is versatile enough to look at for other sounds, too, but going off of just what the OP posted, I don't think that this pedal is the one for him.

To the OP: Also look at the Electro Harmonix HOG - It'll give you a +1 5th and +2 thirds in addition to just simple octave ups or downs. It can make some really interesting sounds...
 
#11
Swift713 and all other MicroPOG supporters:
I'm not sure it's the cheapest octave up. I could get a Whammy pedal
for almost half the cost and Whammy's can do two octave up (unlike the Micro POG).
The drawback of the whammy is its size. Any of you guys use the octave up and two
octave up on the Boss PS-5 or PS-6?

Newbold: I'm assuming these pedals are analog and have a dirty octave up.
I would rather utilize something that can give a clean tone so that dirt is an option.
Also do these effects utilize the effect only or does it pass the initial bass tone as well?
I am NOT wanting my bass tone to go through these pedals at all.

Microsynth and HOG Posts:
I wouldn't want to use these for octave ups only. To begin with they take up way too
much space, plus they are very expensive. I wouldn't want to limit such awesome pedals
to octave up only. I played with the HOG over a year ago. It actually might fit my needs,
but its size and cost keep me from purchasing it at the moment.

Nephilymbass:
I'm trying to avoid multi-processors for primary effects. I would only want to use a multi-
processor for modulation effects (if I ever absolutely NEEDED the pedalboard space) such
as chorus, vibrato, etc.

JonnyAngle:
I'll be peepin' the EQD Organizer to see how it is. I haven't seen it yet.

Overall:
Still hoping to get some opinions on the PS-5 and/or PS-6.
My octave down needs are totally covered with my OC-2 and custom octave pedal.
This is all strictly octave up and two octave up.
 
#14
MightyMiloQuinn said:
I was just looking around on etsy and came across an octave up only pedal from Chicago Stompworks. It doesn't even have knobs on it. Just a straight up octave effect. Not sure how useful it might be, but its only like $70.
Click to expand...

They say it's a clean ("no distortion") octave up, but my experience so far is that it is far from clean, and far from sounding like a fundamental with an octave above. Instead it was kind of a distorted mishmash of the fundamental + the octave. I have to try it at volume on my rig still, but my experience when I tried it out at GC with an Acoustic head and Ampeg 410hlf tells me that the description of the pedal was ... a bit off. So unless my rig makes it sound magical, it's going back.

The Gojira Octave seems to be the closest thing out there in that general price range (it's actually a lot cheaper than the MicroPOG), plus it does a -2 octave (brown note?). So I might give that a try ...
 
#15
I owned a PS6 and strongly disliked it. A friend donated it to me, and it was great to be able to try it out, but I gave it to another friend for free rather quickly. The sound is very "steel drums" and not in a good way. This could still be acceptable when blended or with other effects covering it up, but the pedal also has very noticeable latency, too much for a good groove.
 
#16
Huh, I like the PS-6 a lot. I don't notice any latency problems. There's a demo on my soundcloud page in my sig of the PS-6 being used with an OC-2. The S-bend mode of the PS-6 sounds great going into crazy fuzz pedals. "Eating Sand" on my soundcloud has a PS-6 going into a Copilot Orbit and making it oscillate in a really fun way.
 
#17
Another vote for the Micropog; I used to have a Bass Whammy, it was cool, but kinda fussy to deal with live, I never used the actual 'whammy' feature all that much. The harmonies were the thing for me, but when it was discontinued and started to go for stupid money used I couldn't resist cashing in. The MP can be found used at decent price most of the time, has a small enough footprint and is easy to set up. Whatever you do, DON'T get the Mooer Pure Octave. It's a MP knock-off that fell very short of the mark.
 
#18
I've tried a few (Unibass, POG2, Bass Micro Synth, Whammy, VB99, a few fuzzes, etc.), and none of them sound very good clean. In a mix, through a good guitar amp, any of them will sound OK, but if you mix it with your bass sound through the bass amp, ... eh. The POG/HOG are the only ones with really good tracking IME. Actually, the VB99 can do a decent strat sound with good tracking, but talk about overkill for this application...

If you can put your bass signal through your normal bass amp and route the octaved-up signal through a separate guitar amp, the POG will probably sound great, since it tracks so well. Even a little 5-15 watt tube amp will make the sound come alive, and it will sound like a separate instrument as oppose to a processor. So, make sure that whatever you get, it has the option to send only the effected signal through a separate ouput.
 
#20
CHILDISHGAMBINO said:
Huh, I like the PS-6 a lot. I don't notice any latency problems. There's a demo on my soundcloud page in my sig of the PS-6 being used with an OC-2. The S-bend mode of the PS-6 sounds great going into crazy fuzz pedals. "Eating Sand" on my soundcloud has a PS-6 going into a Copilot Orbit and making it oscillate in a really fun way.
Click to expand...

Weird, the latency on mine was really making it useless. It shouldn't have been caused by my technique, because I never had this problem with the BMS, OC2 or Octamizer. Maybe my unit was defective? The guitarist I gave the pedal too obviously also didn't like it, as he also quickly flipped it.
 

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