jeffwhitfield
Well-known member
Lately, I've been exploring octave pedals. I finalized my search though and ended up with a Foxrox Octron3, an absolutely fantastic analog octave up/down pedal.
However, I still ended up with a Squidward board in the process. The idea was to replace my Parentheses Fuzz with a stand-alone octave pedal that could be added to a Rat or whatever other distortion pedal, adding flexibility while still only taking up two spots. I honestly don't use the boost much in the Parentheses but still love the octave plus the Rat distortion. I have two other Rat-based pedals so...why do I need a third? So, yeah, stand-alone octave would solve that problem.
I was gonna put it in a stand-alone enclosure but, considering how small it is, I figure it could live with another pedal in the same enclosure. Since I had the Cream Pie Fuzz board as well I took a chance and put the two together. Boy oh boy, was that ever a good chance! Each of them by themselves sound like you would expect. But add them together and you end up with something that is down-right gnarly...even more gnarly than the Parentheses!
But where it gets real interesting is when you try them on a bass guitar. The Cream Pie responds quite well to a bass guitar. Doesn't appear to cut the low frequencies much at all so it cuts right through just fine with a heavy amount of fuzz to boot. The Squidward by itself is interesting. It doesn't add any octave effect...but what it does do is add a lot of harmonics, thickening up the sound. Engage both and, holy shit, all hell is unleashed! Doom machine for the win!
Will post some audio clips soon.
However, I still ended up with a Squidward board in the process. The idea was to replace my Parentheses Fuzz with a stand-alone octave pedal that could be added to a Rat or whatever other distortion pedal, adding flexibility while still only taking up two spots. I honestly don't use the boost much in the Parentheses but still love the octave plus the Rat distortion. I have two other Rat-based pedals so...why do I need a third? So, yeah, stand-alone octave would solve that problem.
I was gonna put it in a stand-alone enclosure but, considering how small it is, I figure it could live with another pedal in the same enclosure. Since I had the Cream Pie Fuzz board as well I took a chance and put the two together. Boy oh boy, was that ever a good chance! Each of them by themselves sound like you would expect. But add them together and you end up with something that is down-right gnarly...even more gnarly than the Parentheses!
But where it gets real interesting is when you try them on a bass guitar. The Cream Pie responds quite well to a bass guitar. Doesn't appear to cut the low frequencies much at all so it cuts right through just fine with a heavy amount of fuzz to boot. The Squidward by itself is interesting. It doesn't add any octave effect...but what it does do is add a lot of harmonics, thickening up the sound. Engage both and, holy shit, all hell is unleashed! Doom machine for the win!
Will post some audio clips soon.