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The great Octaver shootout! My search (with comparison video)

Switcharoo

Switcharoo

Mar 5, 2018
95
361
#1
I've been hunting for the perfect OC-2 ish thing for my board, and eventually decided the only way to figure this out was to gather as many of the options as I could. After some discussion over on Basschat I ended up filming some of the comparisons in the hope that it can be useful to someone in the same situation as me.

The options available were:

Boss OC-2 (the old faithful)
Boss OC-5
3Leaf Octabvre Mk1
COG T-47 (2x T-16) (the current incumbent)
Markbass RAW Octaver
MXR Vintage Bass Octave

I've tried to use musical examples for context. If anyone has any questions please let me know! I'm still gathering my thoughts and will report back a little later, including what happened when we did a blind test with my OC-2 loving friend!

I would also love to hear from anyone who has compared the Octabvre Mk1 to the brand new model, which i couldn't get my hands on!

 
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#6
That's some good stuff right there -- Thanks!

Personally, I use an Exar Octavium and it does very, very well. Octave up and down, with only the up adding fuzz. Lots of options and the tracking is very good.

I only mention it in case anyone is looking for an octave pedal and comes across an Octavium on eBay or Reverb or Craigslist or wherever at a good price. It's a really good, European-made pedal. Definitely worth having on anyone's board, in my opinion.

Not my video, but might be of interest:

 
#13
The differences are pretty subtle but judging from your video I liked the Markbass the best, sounded ever so slightly more gnarly to me than the rest, and the COG T-47 the least, which to me sounded a little too smooth for my personal preferences.
 
#16
Nice test.

The 3 Leaf one has a lot of definition in the midrange, coming straight after the OC2. The OC2 sounds smoother and very musical, with the octaves well blended and no prominent midrange, I don't know if it risks to get lost a bit more in the mix.

I have an old EBS Octabass (the early ones without the Range switch and with the damned inverted in/out flow! :mad:) which only has a single octave below and limitations aside I honestly don't know where it'd sonically stand among those - I think the only way to know it would be to include it in the same live test and same environment. Quite "clean" and does the job anyway, I use it sparingly and it's been resting for a while due to 2020. Some tracking issues in some low spots.

@Switcharoo of all those, which tracked the best and the worst in your experience?
 
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#18
WillyW said:
gonna watch now, my only octave experience is with the TC sub-n-up and the OC-2.

I do like the OC-2 so I stopped my search.
Click to expand...

I got the Sub'N'Up Mini and it is hands down the best polyphonic octave up effect on the market as far as I am concerned, at least if you are going for as natural as sounding an octave up as possible and know how to use the Toneprint editor (though pitching a signal a whole octave will always sound somewhat artificial no matter what).

But for an octave down effect the Sub'N'Up frankly sucks, at least my unit, since the octave down, unlike the octave up effect, which has very low, practically unnoticeable, latency, has an even quite notable latency, so much that for me it would be unusable, luckily however the octave up effect is exactly what I bought and use this unit for, to mimic that 8 string "octave" bass sound (with pairs of respective bass and octave strings).

Pretty much nails it spot on by using the EQ options for the signal fed to the octave engine as well as the octave output in the Toneprint editor, in comparison the EHX POG pedals sounds somewhat organ or synth like to me, though that might be desirable for some people, and it does have just as perfect tracking and low latency as the Sub'N'UP.

I realize most are going for that synth like effect when it comes to octave down pedals, but of going for an as natural sounding octave down effect as possible I would recomend the EHX Bass9 Bass Machine, and really wish they would make a Guitar9 Guitar Machine for bass (though as said with some Toneprint editing the Sub'N'Up does pretty much nail that).
 
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#19
Switcharoo said:
I've been hunting for the perfect OC-2 ish thing for my board, and eventually decided the only way to figure this out was to gather as many of the options as I could. After some discussion over on Basschat I ended up filming some of the comparisons in the hope that it can be useful to someone in the same situation as me.

The options available were:

Boss OC-2 (the old faithful)
Boss OC-5
3Leaf Octabvre Mk1
COG T-47 (2x T-16) (the current incumbent)
Markbass RAW Octaver
MXR Vintage Bass Octave

I've tried to use musical examples for context. If anyone has any questions please let me know! I'm still gathering my thoughts and will report back a little later, including what happened when we did a blind test with my OC-2 loving friend!

I would also love to hear from anyone who has compared the Octabvre Mk1 to the brand new model, which i couldn't get my hands on!

Click to expand...


Nice video, I have just started seriously looking into putting a pedal board together and my next pedal will be an octaver. I quite like the sound of the Raw Octaver and it's reasonably priced too!
 

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