Octave Pedals for Acoustic Guitars

[34Roy]

Just picked up my OC-3 from an EBay deal. I paid $60, gave him a couple of my finger style CD's and I also got an AC adaptor with the deal. The pedal was never gigged out so it looks and acts like new.

I took my Pesonus StudioLive and one of my QSC's to try it out and I'm thinking it should work for my needs for Celtic rhythm. I tried doing some finger style tunes, but I don't see that working.

Tonyb, would you mind sharing your settings with me? I think I came pretty close to the sound that I want in my 30 minute trial, but I'd like to cross reference my settings with someone. Thanks

[8daypsalmist]

Buying a Boss OC3 tomorrow off of CL after reading through this tread. I play Farmers Markets, etc and do a bunch of DADGAD tunes and am excited to try this out.

For those of you using the OC3, how did you dial in the sound? What settings are you using?

Thanks fo any input!

Peace,

James

[joeguam]

Thanks for all the great info on this thread. I use a K&K pure mini as a single/mono source, but I'm having a lot of trouble with octave pedals - haven't found one to work with a usable sound yet. I've tried the OC-3, the POG, the MicroPOG, the NanoPOG and the T-Rex Octavius. Out of all of these, the Octavius was the best sounding with the pure mini, but was still too muddy and grumbling-sounding.

I know these octave pedals work well with magnetic sound hole pickups, but has there been anyone with success using the pure mini?

[sam.spoons]

I've just found this thread and I'm thinking of buying an octave pedal but for a slightly different purpose. One of the things I do is play Gypsy Jazz (not terribly well ) using a looper to provide a rhythm guitar part and I want to add a bass line to that. I have tried a couple of octave pedals (Boss and, I think, an EH jobbie) but not been particularly impressed with the sound. It doesn't have to be a perfect upright bass emulation just sufficient to add that flavour to a rhythm guitar loop. Any suggestions?

I will mostly be used with a passive Bigtone bridge in the Aylward but also with a Fishman Rare Earth or B-Band UST in the Eastwood and Emerald respectively.

[rschultz]

I'm thinking about using a EH Pitch Fork on a DiMarzio Black Angel for my acoustic - 1 octave down on lower strings only. Any thoughts on this pairing?

[wood nacho]

Interesting to see this thread here! I have been getting into the 'extended range' guitar idea.

Has anyone here heard of the 'Submarine pickup'? It is what I have been using to pickup the signal from just the E and A strings. Works quite well, some people might be distracted by the looks of it though. Check it out...

http://www.submarinepickup.com/

I have the submarine on my Taylor 214ce, and I run the signal first into a Behringer EQ pedal. I completely cut out the 3 or 4 high frequencies (-15db) and boost a couple of the low bands. This acts as a kind of Low-Pass filter. I also boost the gain quite a bit because the signal from the Submarine is very low if one doesn't use nickel strings.

I then run the signal into a EHX pitchfork, with the octave down setting. I set the blend knob around 90%.

This combo works for me. I mix in a tiny bit of the bass to my regular guitar signal just to give a bit more fatness to the overall sound. I play a duo show with my partner, no bass guitar, so this setup really helps to fill out the sound. Maybe Ill post some sound clips sometime next week.

Summary: Submarine pickup - Behringer 7band EQ - EHX pitchfork

[rschultz]

I'm leaning toward the OC-3 at this point. I've reviewed a dozen octave pedals and have 2 features that would be handy for me:
a) direct out - for using that signal in a dual source
b) low pass filter, to just grab the lower string or two.

The ONLY octave pedal that I've found to do this is the OC-3... at least without spending $250+.

[joeguam]

So I use an octave pedal to loop bass lines for almost every song in about 200 gigs/year. It's one of my lifelines because I play mostly reggae and island music. The reason I don't use the Boss OC-3 anymore is because the tracking is terrible. I found myself having to delete and re-loop bass lines quite often due to the tracking response time lag.

I loved the idea of having the low pass filter though, so now I use the Nano POG in conjunction with a custom Broughton Low Pass Filter pedal after it. I have both these pedals sitting in a single loop pedal which I use to kick the bass octave on/off.

Oh yeah, I banged my head on this bit doing testing for months before I finally figured it out: Octave pedals do not do well with vibrations from wood (e.g. soundboard transducers, piezo's, etc.), they work best with signals from magnetic sources (e.g. magnetic pickups or microphones).

[rschultz]

Originally Posted by joeguam

So I use an octave pedal to loop bass lines for almost every song in about 200 gigs/year. It's one of my lifelines because I play mostly reggae and island music. The reason I don't use the Boss OC-3 anymore is because the tracking is terrible. I found myself having to delete and re-loop bass lines quite often due to the tracking response time lag.

I loved the idea of having the low pass filter though, so now I use the Nano POG in conjunction with a custom Broughton Low Pass Filter pedal after it. I have both these pedals sitting in a single loop pedal which I use to kick the bass octave on/off.

Oh yeah, I banged my head on this bit doing testing for months before I finally figured it out: Octave pedals do not do well with vibrations from wood (e.g. soundboard transducers, piezo's, etc.), they work best with signals from magnetic sources (e.g. magnetic pickups or microphones).

Well that's an extremely useful bit of information. The OC-3 is like $60 used. The nano Pog + Broughton LPF is probably in the $300 range. But what you say about octave pedals not working well with SBT's, piezo's, mic's, etc... but working better with mags. Do you think the OC-3 would track well with a mag? The manual says humbuckers works better than single coils.

I have no doubt the Pog tracks better, but it's a little cost prohibitive.

[joeguam]

I may have mentioned previously that I tested the OC-3, POG, POG2, Mooer Tender Octaver, T-Rex Octavius and the Nano POG. All of them could not produce a usable bass guitar sound an octave below a guitar's normally-tuned low E/A/D (lowest at 82Hz) with either the K&K pure mini or an LR Baggs Element (UST). It had too much grumble and crackling in the low end.

However, all these pedals worked fine in producing a usable bass guitar sound when using an electric guitar humbucker or a Baggs M1 passive - which is what I use now. The Baggs M80 brought too much wood vibrations into the signal and didn't sound as clean as the M1. They all did pretty good with tracking except for the OC-3 and occasionally the Mooer.

You could also definitely get by without the low pass filter pedal and most people won't notice a thing. However, the LPF pedal significantly cleans up the bass note by taking away the frequencies that hold the sound of your finger touching the string, possibly any buzzing from trying to push through some greater dynamics on a bass line, etc. It just makes it a cleaner bass tone/note.

[rschultz]

Originally Posted by joeguam

I may have mentioned previously that I tested the OC-3, POG, POG2, Mooer Tender Octaver, T-Rex Octavius and the Nano POG. All of them could not produce a usable bass guitar sound an octave below a guitar's normally-tuned low E/A/D (lowest at 82Hz) with either the K&K pure mini or an LR Baggs Element (UST). It had too much grumble and crackling in the low end.

However, all these pedals worked fine in producing a usable bass guitar sound when using an electric guitar humbucker or a Baggs M1 passive - which is what I use now. The Baggs M80 brought too much wood vibrations into the signal and didn't sound as clean as the M1. They all did pretty good with tracking except for the OC-3 and occasionally the Mooer.

You could also definitely get by without the low pass filter pedal and most people won't notice a thing. However, the LPF pedal significantly cleans up the bass note by taking away the frequencies that hold the sound of your finger touching the string, possibly any buzzing from trying to push through some greater dynamics on a bass line, etc. It just makes it a cleaner bass tone/note.

I guess I'm surprised to hear you say they ALL tracked well using a passive humbucker EXCEPT the OC-3. Many (many, many) people say it's pretty good... not great, but very good. Pog would definitely be better, but for the money, the OC-3 has been on thousands off boards over the past 15 years. I might just have to try it for myself to see what you are saying.

The Broughton LPF is interesting for $110, the range only goes down to 220 hz. I'm kinda surprised it even works. I would have thought a LPF of 120-150 Hz would be ideal... before the octave pedal.

[joeguam]

I had problems with the OC-3, and when I did a Google search on it, I found that many others were having similar problems with tracking as well --- they were just finding ways to change their music to compensate for it. If you notice many of the ads for octave pedals these days, quite a bit promote their product's improvement on tracking. The OC-3 has been around for years, but there has only been very few options for years as well. You really just have to try it for yourself and see if it works for your needs. Jon Gomm uses the OC-3 and swears by it - because he just uses the polyphonic mode for the "lowest note in the chord". For this purpose, tracking isn't really critical because it's one note played behind many other sounds from the guitar. Jon doesn't loop reggae bass lines that require almost perfect timing with the kick drum and rhythm guitar --- this is what requires better tracking. So you just have to test them out to see what works for you. We can debate this for years, but only you can determine if you need to spend the $60 for the OC-3 or the $200 for the nano POG.

Sorry, I forgot to mention that I reached out to Josh Broughton and asked him to make me a custom LPF pedal that went down to 90Hz...

[rschultz]

Ahhhhh, 90 Hz would definitely do the trick.

And you make some good points on the OC-3. Style of music is clearly a factor, and yes there have been advances in tracking since it came out. I'd love a pog, just hard to justify the money.

Thanks for the input!

[wood nacho]

Here is a little ditty to give you an idea how my guitar/bass setup sounds. Explained in an earlier post. Bass might be mixed a little louder than I would normally have it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnOJ54ptJ1k

[lschwart]

Originally Posted by wood nacho

Here is a little ditty to give you an idea how my guitar/bass setup sounds. Explained in an earlier post. Bass might be mixed a little louder than I would normally have it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnOJ54ptJ1k

That was just fabulous. Thank you for posting!

Bass sounded great. The playing and singing even better!

Louis