I owned this one for a while, too, but moved on in favor of some pitch-shifting madness. Still, it's my favorite analog suboctave pedal simply because of the smooth, thick tones and gritty weirdness it can provide, depending on how you set it.
CONTROLS:- High Filter - Shapes the upper harmonics of the synthesized sub-octave note. It can also do some weird things as you crank it up...
- Blend - Blends the clean signal with the synthesized sub-octave note. Crank it up, and you get less clean signal.
- Bass Filter - Shapes the fundamental and lower harmonics of the synthesized sub-octave note. Roll it back, and the sound gets deeper and smoother. Crank it up, and it gets more aggressive.
- Sub Switch - When on, the Bass Filter knob works, and the sound is more traditional (but DEEP). When off, the Bass Filter knob is disabled. The resulting tones with the High Filter and Blend knobs are... well... read on.
TRACKING: Single note, tracks well to low A, warbly on notes below it (what, were you expecting perfection from an
analog octave pedal? :p). It'll follow every note, regardless - it'll just get warbly when you play sustained low notes.
OUTPUTS: Two outputs - one Effect Out and one Dry Out (for a clean signal). This allows you to send the blended clean/sub-octave sound to one amp, and your normal signal to another. Pretty cool, especially if you're into bi-amping.
SOUND: With the Sub switch on, the tone is more traditional - deep, smooth, sub-octave goodness. Set the High and Bass Filter knobs to 12:00, and you get what I feel is the perfect standard tone. You can adjust the filters to taste for more upper-end content or deep bass, but overall, that Bass Filter knob is overwhelming... you may want to set the Blend knob between 9:00 and 12:00 to keep more clean signal in, because the lows can get DEEP!
With the Sub switch off, things get really interesting! As you turn up the Blend and High Filter, it becomes glitch enthusiast heaven. The tone gets fuzzy, glitchy, detuned, bizzare, octaved... just plain "gnarly", in the words of the instruction manual. It's more like an Android than an octave pedal on bass in this mode! If you run it before fuzz or any other sort of distortion, you can really work up some bizarre glitch sounds and general weirdness. Even when fed a dirty signal, it's pretty cool.
I'll detail this more tomorrow, as I need to play with it further. It's certainly
not what I expected from this pedal, but I'm loving it!
VOLUME BOOSTING/LOSS?: It all depends on the settings. With the Sub switch off, there is a volume drop when the Blend knob is around the middle (10:00 - 2:00). Without a Volume knob, you really can't compensate for the loss, although it's not too bad. Personally, I think the mixes at 10:00 and 2:00 sound better anyway - at least, better than the mixes in between.
With the Sub switch on, you get a significant low-frequency boost, so unless you want overwhelmingly deep bass, I'd keep the blend below 12:00. This thing packs quite a punch, though! In that 10:00 - 2:00 range, you don't get a volume drop... the powerful sub-octave's low end is still there, and it's way louder than it would be when the pedal is off. It'd nice to have more high-end content, though, because that's what's missing - the clean signal drops in volume, while the sub-octave holds it own without a problem. The easy way to counter this is to lower the blend; I've found that the ideal mix is below 12:00, as opposed to being right at 12:00.
The perfect blend for me is around 10:30 or so, with the Sub switch on, and filters tweaked to taste. But if I flip the Sub switch off, I crank up the blend to about 3:00 or more to get some really gnarly octave stuff.
OVERALL: I've always been more fond of the separate volume setup (blend knobs tend to annoy me with that oh-so common problem of volume drops in middle-range settings), but it's forgivable, given the possibilities of clean, smooth octave sounds
and glitchy weirdness from this pedal. Plus, it sounds so cool with my MXR Blowtorch
SCORE:
DISCLAIMER: I think my score is biased because I like weirdness.
