whats the best octave fuzz??

[JBandtheSalts]

Ive had one of those little danelectro french toast pedals for a couple of years that I got as a part of a trade, Id never use it in a real situation, its just too noisey and I cant really seem to find any great settings with it.

Recently I saw Dunlop came out with a reissue of the octavio pedal and got interested and then started to do research, only to find all sorts of contradicting things about that pedal as well as tons of contradicting things on others, such as roger mayer's octavia, and chicago iron's octavian..

I like the sounds hendrix gets out of the effect on band of gypsies recordings, so i guess im aiming for that sort of sound..

what do you guys think? what do you guys like??

thanks in advance..
John

[vegetablejoe]

I have the Voodoo Labs Proctavia. Imo, it does the Band of Gypsys sound, particularly the solos on "Who Knows" credibly well, if you put it before a TS or other od.

I don't hear where else I can use this pedal on; it seems to be a one-trick pony. And although I love listening to Hendrix, I don't/can't play in his style. The comments/reviews on HC are correct: one has to learn to play this pedal, as it sounds good only with a strat's neck pup and only on certain areas of the fretboard. It also has to be positioned before any buffered pedals. Lastly it can't co-exist on the same power line as your other pedals - pinning is opposite to most other pedals e.g. Boss, od's, modulation, etc.

If you wanna do the BOG sound, yeah this will take you there. Be sure to bring along your own od and wah when you test this pedal at a store.

I hope that info helps. I haven't tried any other Octavia+fuzz pedals yet.

[JBandtheSalts]

thanks for the suggestion, i hadnt looked that one up, seems like it has a better bang for the buck ratio than a lot of others..

john

[WrapAround]

That's kinda funny because I've used French Toast for a couple of years (when I need octavia type effect) and it has worked just great. I can dial out most of the "fuzz" and have almost clean octave up.

It's a copy of Foxx unit, so if French Toast doesn't work with your rig/taste, I would recommend against the one from Foxx.

[Tim Bowen]

Current offerings are mostly based on Mayer, FOXX, and Tychobrahe circuits.

Regarding 'octave up', I've played or owned Prescription Electronics Experience, Voodoo Lab, Fulltone Octafuzz, Addrock Electric Smile. For my money, the Addrock was the best of the bunch, and that's a Tychobrahe-based circuit. No experience with Chicago Iron or MJM, although they get great reviews. I've played BJFE's "Candy Apple" fuzz, which sported some delicious octave fuzz tones, and is, to the best of my knowledge, a reasonably proprietary design, not a spin on a clone, per se. I had a FOXX Tone Machine back in the 70's, but I didn't know tone at that point.

'Octave down' is a different beast. Jimmy Page cut "Fool in the Rain" with an MXR Blue Box, and I believe Jeff Beck used a Mutron on "Come Dancing" from the Wired record. I love this sound, but my use is quite minimal. I keep a reissue Blue Box around for the odd session when I need the sound. You can get the octave down thing from the old brown BOSS pedal and the BOSS synthbass pedal or whatever it's called, and Digitech has a synth ped as well. I like the MXR, with all its shortcomings intact. If I wanted this tone with high fidelity and optimized tracking, I'd pop for the "Octron" by Dave Fox.

[the guy who invented fire]

For octave up tones with fuzz I really like m,y Fulltone Ultimate Octave. It's got a seperate footswitch for the octave up so I can still use it as a stand alone fuzz as well which is nice since I don;t have to have 2 fuzzes on my board...