Best DIY Octave pedal?

[Danny G]

A friend wants me to build her an Octave pedal.  What are some the of best DIY ones out there?  She's not completely sure want she wants, maybe something similar to the Boss Octave pedal.

Suggestions?  Thanks!

[Mark Hammer]

The PAiA Rocktave incorporates a lot of smart features for optimizing tracking.  It may not sound as reckless and wicked as the Blue Box, but it behaves itself nicely so you can keep your mind on the music and not on how you're going to get the box to behave.  Needs a compander chip (NE570 or 571) and a 4136 quad op-amp (if you use the original PCB layout) *OR* a TL074/84 if you use Dean Hazelwanter's layout.  VERY moddable.  Down side is the board is bigger than "standard" size, and some of the resistor values are a little off-beat and unlikely to be in everyone's parts bin.

[Jim Jones]

Hi Danny,

I don't know about "best" but I built the Green Ringer and I think it sounds great!  It works "clean" too, it's more pronounced with an overdrive in front but still sounds good without.

Not much to the build either...


Jim

[Ben N]

A Green Ringer is an octave UP.  I think Danny was talking about an octave DOWN, which is a whole other thing, technically.

[Jim Jones]

Where did he say octave down?

Jim

[Samuel]

Also, keep in mind that none of the DIY octave down solutions will work in a similar manner to the Boss. The DIY octave pedals out there typically make for a great deal of signal distortion apart from the octaving, don't track well on pitches below the 12th fret of the guitar, and are very affected by the pickup used and the position of the tone knob.

Don't get me wrong, the sound produced by a Green Ringer or a BlueBox is an interesting and totally usable one, but its not "play an E, get a close facsimile one octave down" like you'll get from a digital solution...go listen to some sound samples of the popular octave DIY projects and you'll get a sense of what I mean.

[Mark Hammer]

Where did he say octave down?

Jim

He didn't, directly, but by mentioning the Boss unit (they don't make a unit for octave-up) it was easily inferable (at least to me it was) that he mean't down not up.

If I'm wrong, Danny, please let me know so we can set this thread on the right course.

[Jim Jones]

Oh, my bad - I'm not familiar with a lot of the Boss pedals...god I hate FET buffering.

Jim

[Danny G]

I'm looking at Octave DOWN pedals for my friend.  My bad.

[jmusser]

Danny, there is already a thread on the first page about Octave Down pedals that you may want to look through. Joe Davvison's "Rocktave" pedal seems to be a good bet. Most of the time down octaves are just referred to as Octave pedals, where up octaves are referred to as up octaves or "Octavias"