Quatschmacher

Not essential I suppose but to be honest I wish I’d got one way sooner as I lost a bunch of presets I liked because I wanted to save others I was working on. Having the hub takes away that problem. It also allows the use of a regular expression pedal, which can be mapped to any parameter; this means you can vary the sound of a preset easily.

I’m at the other end of this at the moment. I have 3 fantastic octavers (Octabvre, MXR BOD and Octo-Nøjs) and I'd like to let at least one of them go and am having real difficulty deciding.

128 actually, plus the two hardware presets. Definitely get a hub if you’re getting a Manta (there’s no difference, other than cosmetic, between the Soundblox V1 and the Neuro).

A phaser, but if you get a Manta then you’ll have that covered.

£85-95 is usual though I think one went for £75 once on here.

Indeed. The two I’ve sent sound utterly boring on their own but sound amazing with octave and fuzz in parallel running into them.

They are different but there’s some overlap in the sounds they can create. I’ve owned both and I ended up keeping the BOD and selling the Octamizer. The BOD is the tightest tracking octaver I’ve played and is incredibly good value. I found the Octamizer a bit sluggish sometimes in its tracking whereas the BOD never misses a beat. For me, feel is also important.

Glad to hear it’s sorted. Have you switched it into “extended mode”? If not, you should as you get 24 filters in total. I find I mostly use the 4-pole filter but there are some really nasty-sounding others in there. The controls are very interactive and can be quite extreme. For example, when programming a down sweep envelope you can often only use the “slow attack” side of the mod source dial, the speed knob no higher than half. You then need to take care to not set the frequency too low if using a large depth setting as it’ll just go straight into sub territory and stay there. Since I can’t share preset files with you until you get a hub, try replicating these from my screenshots below. When using the Octo-Nøjs, try experimenting with its volume levels as it has a big impact on how the filter responds, often you’ll need to back the volume off. Definitely get a hub otherwise you’ll kick yourself when you lose sounds you’ve created. @BenR24

You should also do it with Octamizer and Mastotron in parallel.

That is a good price on the Octamizer and similarly priced to the excellent MXR BOD. I’d get the Octamizer now and try out other stuff next to it later. You’ll easily sell it again if you prefer something else. The cheapest I’ve seen a used Octabvre for was £180 but that was a one-off, usually they are about £200. The mini version about £160.

In fact, make sure it’s getting 180-200mA by itself. I’d avoid daisy chaining it - that’s how I lost my original presets; it went all weird, made funny noises and locked up.

Try a factory reset. If it’s been fed too little power it can lock up and do weird stuff.

There have only been two that I know of. Cam bought one and then sold it on here and it might be the one the other poster above mentioned. The other is mine which I bought new. I’ve been considering selling it as I have the MXR and the Octabvre too and I’m thinking of buying a midibass, but it’s really good and every time I play it I think I should probably keep it. I’ve pmd you a couple of clips, check your inbox for the google drive links.

The Octabvre and Octo-Nøjs both track better than the Octamizer for me. The Octamizer has a very full, deep sound with the tone rolled off, very subby and more so than the ON. It has a bit of growl with the filter opened but not as much as the ON has. The growl from the higher harmonics is what will give the filter something to chew on so I prefer that. However, if you’re getting a Mastotron and running it parallel to the Octamizer this will be less of an issue. I love the characteristic sound of the Octabvre, even on its own. The ON will certainly give you more options. If you’re only planning on buying one then you’ll get the added bonus of the two extra fuzz circuits which are already in parallel to the octave. I’ve actually ran the ON and Mastotron in parallel into the Manta and it sounds massive. If you can, I’d suggest trying out all of them and see if you have a preference. If you’re near Sheffield you’re welcome to try mine. I can probably send you a couple of very rough clips of some combinations.

I’ve been on this path for some time now. Gated fuzz is a key element as the gating replicates the on/off nature of a synth’s keypress. I’m using a Mastotron, 3Leaf Doom (with a TC Sentry to gate it) and the Emma Octo Nøjs. The latter two are also dynamic octave fuzzes so sound a bit like having 2nd voice/oscillator. The Tech21 Red Ripper is another such dynamic pedal but isn’t gated. (There’s a Chunk Brown Dog gated fuzz in the sale section at the moment which is another good choice.) Octaver so far I’ve held on to the Octabvre MKII (the Mini is also cool) which is the classic OC-2 type sound, MXR BOD and Emma Octo-Nøjs. The MXR has the best response I’ve played (the Red Witch octave pedals are as responsive - again there’s one on sale right now and an Octabvre II). Filter I’m finding my Manta is giving the most satisfying results at the moment. It’s not as phat or juicy sounding as my analogue filters but I’ve managed to create some nice presets which work well. My Wonderlove also gets some great sounds but takes a bit more work to dial it in. Some way to parallel blend the fuzz and octave yields great results as you can keep the octave clean and run both it and the dirt into the filter. I use a Boss LS-2 for this. The Cog T-65 or T-70 allow this with the bonus of an octave up. A quick and really good combination would be to get the Octo-Nøjs (which does octave down in parallel with fuzzy octave down and gated octave fuzz) and run that into the Manta. There’s a wealth of good sounds to be had from that combination and used you could get both for around £225 in total. The EHX Bass Microsynth is also worth a look. It’s more limited than the Manta but can do some stuff the Manta can’t. It has octave down, octave up, clean and square wave fuzz all running into a resonant filter. The cool thing about this is the envelope section which works by specifying a start and stop frequency and setting the rate at which the filter sweeps between them. You set the volume threshold at which the envelope is triggered. This means the envelope shape remains uniform regardless of your playing dynamics, which is how synths without velocity sensitivity (Minimoog, Odyssey) and key tracking would work. I find this most noticeable when retriggering fast notes - the Manta ends up staying subby and undefined as it won’t retrigger whereas the BMS will retrigger. Great for fast staccato lines.

So true. The second law is that something I’ve wanted for ages, rarely comes up and I spent loads on then comes up multiple times for sale at vastly reduced prices at the point I need to sell it.

I know what you mean. The phone is also not foot-controllable. Sadly MIDI Pad 2 doesn’t have a function to share pages created. (I have emailed them to request this functionality.) It’s a shame as I spent quite a bit of time creating one which allows instant access to patches 1-128 which involves tediously configuring each button manually to have the corresponding program number (sliders for choosing the parameters was a bit tricky). They should write some code to automate the most widely-used configurations or have some templates. Still, it works fine now for creating patches away from a PC. For live use, a foot controller will be needed. @dood has a couple for sale on the effects sale forum.

Do you have an iPhone or iPad? If so MIDI Pad 2 is a £3 app that you can use to send program messages. It works fine. Plug into the hub’s USB port and a camera connection kit into the iPhone. The hub allows you to store 128 presets in addition to the 2 hardware presets on the pedal. Really useful even if you only own the one pedal.

I got it working again. I don’t seem to be able to see the currently installed toneprint. It is still buggy as it crashed the first time I tried to save my changes to a template