Diff between octave + fuzz and 'fender blender'

[ethrbunny]

Hi all - Im wanting to build an octave up/down pedal. I already have a 'fender blender' and Im wondering if a std octave (w/ or w/out fuzz) would be much different.

Am I totally in space here? Is it a night/day thing?

[petemoore]

after hearing the soundclips of the almost reissued FB on the fender page, it sounded to me like it covers Alot of octave ground. That was the soundclip though. I heard what sounded like GR ring mod type stuff, Tycho [though I think other Octaves get closer to the 'original work' copied on the clip, it sounded pretty cool cause it's the Super Bad FB.
 Experience building octaves and fuzzes...the FB has much more in it, thoough it can be tamed and tuned, I would suspect that smaller circuits will have the ability to sound different.
 Perhaps you'd like to build just the octave section of the FB or Tycho or Octavia Or FTM or, then you can put different fuzz/fuzz boostere in front and tweek/octave yourself to oblivion !!!
 Green Ringer is pretty small, by itself it is 'smaller sounding that many ring/octavers' and can sound really good with a Fuzz before or after it.
 That said, tuning diodes and stuff around the FWR section may help tune in/out octave and other wierdness.


 I think

[RandomRedLetters]

Octave up vs octave down are two very different circuits

[Mark Hammer]

As RRL correctly notes, octave up and octave down, when produced by analog means, are two different beasts.  "Beasts" is perhaps an appropriate word to use since they both tend to be a bit wild, unruly, and hard to control.

The Fender Blender IS an octave fuzz, as are indeed, 80% of all octave-up units on the market.  Why?  Partly because everyone loves fuzz the way everyone likes fried potatoes, but also because diode-based rectification of a signal to get frequency-doubling is simply the most expedient way to get an octave up...or something resembling it.

Having said that, because virtually all of these pedals apply high gain to make the octave tone more obvious post-rectification, you're going to find product-to-product (and often pedal-to-pedal *within* a model) differences in tone the way you would with ANY distortion pedal.  Go here - http://members.fortunecity.com/uzzfay/home.html - and you'll see all manner of variations in what is essentially the same octave-fuzz pedal.

I suspect a lot of folks have the unrealized dream of playing with an octave-up and octave down at the sametime; in effect a more "synth-like" sound.  This, of course, what keeps sales of the E-H Microsynth brisk, and is one of the reasons why you owe it to yourself to check out the recently released P.O.G. fromElectro-Harmonix.  Typically, octave-up units, while not strictly mono in the classic sense, tend not to make the octave clearly audible unless one is playing single notes.  Octave-down unit, by their very nature ARE strictly monophonic.  The P.O.G., however, is polyphonic (that's what the P stands for). It costs more than your average floor pedal, but it's an extremely flexible and impressive unit.  I spent 15 minutes with one and was VERY pleasantly surprised.

The only DIY project I've seen with a simultaneous up and down octave is a Japanese one I posted at my site - http://hammer.ampage.org - which is called the Super-Octaver.  I haven't built it, but some folks here have, and reported success.  It IS mono, however.

If a person wanted to cobble together their own up/down unit from existing circuits, abandon all thoughts of sticking them in series.  First of all, there is the question of what you get when you divide by 2 then multiply by 2 (or multiply then divide).  Then there is the issue of managing what is often a jittery signal. The smart money goes with using some type of simple compressor front end, followed by a splitter that directs the signal to separate octave up and down-generating circuits, which can then be mixed back together.  (I was going to recommend taking a peek at the Rocktave article on my site, but it seems to have gone missing and I don't know why; perhaps an "official" request from somewhere?).  Parallel processing also means you can custom tailor the tone of each without affecting the other.

Since the two types of signals are often unstable (though compression *should* help), some sort of simple gating prior to the mixing stage would be useful to keep the sputters out of the final mixed signal.  The PAiA Rocktave, in fact, includes this function which is why it is one of the best, and why you should recommend purchase of one whenever possible.

[ethrbunny]

MH - as always - hats off to you. I was thinking of splitting the signal and giving the option of up or down in a single box. Perhaps Ill skip that project altogether.

I was inspired by the new(er) White Stripes song "Black Orchid" ( I think thats what its called) and was wondering what else could be done with a simple octave pedal.

Thanks all.