Matching Transistors RM Octavia

[robotboy]

Hey guys,
I just finished a RM Octavia last night. It worked on the second try after I figured out that I had a solder bridge on my PCB. Anyway, I tried it out this morning, and I'm pretty happy with way it sounds, but I'd like to get a bit more octave out of it. I'm assuming the reason that the clips on the Roger Mayer website have a stronger octave is because of the way he matches transistors. I've got all 4 transistors socketed and about 10 MPSA13 to experiment with. I did a series of random swaps this morning, and I'm pretty surprised how many different sounds I can get by swapping in random MPSA13s and 2N3906 (for Q1). This leaves me wondering how to achieve the "real" RM Octavia sound. Is there a relatively easy method to match transistors for the purpose of getting a really strong octave? Right now I have an almost synthy and slightly gated sound, which is pretty cool, but I'd like to get the same sound as the clips on the RM website.

[Jaicen_solo]

Sounds like the bias is off in one or more of your transistors. Which layout did you build yours from??
I made one a few years ago and had to swap a few emmittor resistors to get it sounding right. I also switched the diodes to OC91's (with sockets for testing). These mods made the pedal much nicer to play and a lot smoother. I usually keep the gain low as well. It's not a terribly well pronounced octave, but it's not bad. I built a variation on the Octave generating section (with mosboost) to add to my Fuzz face, which gives a much stronger octave effect all across the neck. You could try that in series with your RM.

[robotboy]

I came home from work and tried about twenty transistor combos until I found one that sounds pretty good to my ears. There are probably much better ways of doing this, but I've got a nice ringing sort of octave going now and it sounds much less gated. It probably won't ever sound exactly like a real RM Octavia, but I've gotta get this done by xmas  . Anyhow, thanks for the reply. If I understood this circuit, I'd would have tried changing emitter resistors, but unfortunately, I don't. BTW, this is the layout I used.