AJ567

All solid choices, nice work! I've tried both the Octamizer and T16, they're both great. Octamizer can go from smooth and natural to growly, and is exceptional for in terms of clean blend options thanks to the tilt EQ on the clean channel. T16 is a bit more 'synthy' in terms of the OC2-school of 'nintendo'-esque sounds (hope you know what I mean...). Octamizer when set at the 'growly' end of its range is sort of synthy, but in a different way. Overall the Octamizer is a bit more organic sounding/feeling. Haven't actually tried the Mastotron or SA Manta but they seem like solid choices, as I say.

You have a long and fun journey ahead of you Ben! Since you mention wanting an octave pedal for chordal things, I'm guessing you have an octave UP pedal in mind. There are basically two classes of octaver - analog and digital - which should be thought of as different things. If you want a clean octave up, you need a digi octaver. For octave down, people generally agree that digital sounds wimpy, while analog is awesome (and can get very synthy). NB analog octave up does exist, but for technical reasons it has more in common with a fuzz effect - you won't get a clear sounding octave-up note. A classic combination for synthy sounds is Octave > Dirt > Envelope Filter. Octave can be either digital-up or analog-down. Different flavours... I like using both at the same time ;). Also defo worth playing around with the order of these three effects though. Xotic BB has you covered for dirt, at least for the time being. Fuzz (especially gated fuzz) can work very well for synthy stuff though, so you might want to add one in due course. I personally go Analog Octave Down > Fuzz > Digi Octave Up > Overdrive > Envelope Filter. From what it sounds like you are looking for, I would recommend that you buy a digital octave pedal (as per my first point) and envelope filter to begin with. Combined with your BB, these will give you a flavour of what the octave/dirt/envelope combination is all about. You will probably end up adding an analog octave pretty quickly after that. Followed by a fuzz. My personal recommendations are as follows - DIGITAL OCTAVE: TC Sub'n'up. No-brainer IMO, check my post on page 2 here for why. ENVELOPE FILTER: More than any other pedal, this really is all down to personal preference and playing style. You will have to try a few. MXR Bass Envelope Filter is a decent starting point. Very popular, and very tweakable so you can get to know what you do and don't like. ANALOG OCTAVE: Boss OC2 is the classic, but it has its problems, so a lot of people prefer modern interpretations of this pedal - check out 3leaf Octabvre, MXR Bass Octave deluxe. Those kind of build out from what the OC2 can do as a starting point. Aguilar Octamizer and any of the COG models are very popular as well (but a bit less focused on 'nailing the OC2 thing'). FUZZ: Many many options. For 'synthy' I would start by checking out 3leaf Doom, Darkglass Duality, Zvex Mastotron. NB there are quite a few all-in-one 'synth' pedals out there. My personal preference is to avoid these, because I feel like I get more versatility out of multiple 'specialist' pedals. I'm also picky so I like to be able to choose each element of the 'synth' signal chain. Perhaps others will chime in with recommendations for 'all in one' pedals though, if you want to go down that route. Also, I personally don't like modulation effects, so somebody else will have to chime in for Chorus pedal suggestions!

Chiming in late here, but I'd fully recommend the TC Sub'n'up for this. I use mine exclusively for octave up. It replaced a Nano Pog on my board. It can do everything the Pog can do, in the same form factor, for a fair bit cheaper. It's also true bypass, if you care about that sort of thing. Interestingly the tone in 'poly' mode is quite different to the Pog. When you use the octave up only, you get loads more bass and low mids. This makes perfect sense when you think about it - e.g. on a low E, by applying an octave up, you are 'doubling up' on all the low harmonics (82hz, 164hz, etc). So perhaps the Subnup gives a 'truer' octave up compared to the Pog. Unfortunately, that sounds way too muddy in my opinion. I realise that EHX have voiced the Pog octave up to be quite 'thin' sounding. This sounds great when blended with the dry - the two voices are nice and distinct. So I made a tone-print exclusively for octave up. It slices off all the low mids / lows from the octave voice (HPF set at 400hz or something). I then reassigned the Sub1 knob so that this is a 'Tone' knob (variable LPF affecting the octave up voice only - got the idea from the Digitech Mosaic); Sub 2 is reassigned as a drive knob (affecting the Octave up voice only as well). Super versatile, and awesome sounding. Sounds pretty similar to the Pog with Tone all the way up and Drive all the way down. But by varying those knobs you can get a load of other great sounds. However the real icing on the cake is the 'classic' mode. This gives you an very cool, synthy-sounding (think OC2), fully polyphonic octave up. I don't know how I never thought to do it before, but I've been grinning ear to ear since I made the discovery: I tried running an actual analog octave down (Octabvre in my case) into the Supnup octave up on 'classic' mode... synth heaven!

Occasionally, a combination of two pedals using different grounding schemes can turn the cable that connects them into an antenna for noise. I ran into this once - my practice space is super noisy (near computer and dimmer lights) and I was getting a weird hum from my board. All isolated supplies. Checked every pedal and cable, nothing was faulty. Then I discovered by accident that changing just one of the patch cables for another type caused the hum to disappear. This made no sense to me, so I triple checked everything, swapped in a few different ‘type A’ cables and a few ‘type B’. Result was the same every time. I was totally baffled but eventually just let it go and used the less noisy type of cable in that position. Only now after seeing that video am I starting to understand this mystery! Interestingly, the only difference between the two types of patch I used is the connectors. One uses Hicon pancakes and the other uses Switchcraft 226. The pancake version was the one with more hum in this situation, so you may be on to something... Whether or not you encounter this totally depends on the pedals in question, pedal order, etc. And of course whether or not there is a material amount of noise for you to pick up. I would say just take your board to a noisy environment and see if you actually have any issues. If not, great. If yes, consider swapping your pancakes for Switchcraft plugs!

[quote name='Quatschmacher' timestamp='1508083819' post='3389626'] Does anyone have an idea whether you can assign a filter to one of the knobs to make it function a bit like the T-16 or Octamizer filter knobs? [/quote] Yep, you can do exactly this. I've got a toneprint with EQ set up for a 6 db/oct low pass filter, with the 'sub2' knob controlling the corner frequency. All the way up is 20khz, so you hear the full range, all the way down is 20hz, so you don't hear the octave voice at all. For extra fun, you can set one of the other knobs to add drive to the octave voice...

[color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif] [quote]Sounds like you preferred the 3Leaf Proton to the MXR M82, but didn't like it's ease of use or its down filter. Kinda feels like the Aguilar FT, which has also been described as more polite than the MXR, is not dissimilar to the 3Leaf Proton but hopefully addresses both the ease of use and not great down filter points you encountered. Did you consider the Aggie FT as a possible alternative when you were[i] "s[/i][i]pending way too much time reading forums and watching youtube demos" [/i][a common BC syndrome methinks!]? [/quote] Yep, that's an accurate summary. I briefly looked at the Aguilar - it's a cool and unique take on the whole envelope filter idea, with the up-sweep and down-sweep happening at the same time, but that sound isn't for me personally. Interesting that Bo0tsy found the EBS muddy. As I mentioned, it's got the internal high-pass mix-in feature so you can set it to retain as much treble as you like... NB there is also an internal trimmer for output level (which I forgot to mention). You can dial in a fair bit of boost if you want your squelch to jump out of the mix. Overall, I'm very satisfied with the EBS. It's very possible that there are filters out there that I would like even more, but for the sake of my wallet, I'm going to resist looking to hard! Your right on the price point - new boxes are expensive. FYI I bought all three pedals on here second hand, and the EBS happened to be the cheapest by a fair bit. [/font][/color]

I'm always surprised that the EBS BassIQ doesn't get more love around here. It's the envelope pedal I settled on after being disappointed by the MXR M82 and flipping it, then doing the same with the 3leaf Proton. And spending way too much time reading forums and watching youtube demos in between... MXR was the first pedal I tried, since the demos online sounded good and it received high praise on here and talkbass. But when playing, I found that it has a baked in character (agressive, fast, quacky, star-wars-laser-gun-battle type of sound) that no amount of knob twiddling can really get you away from. Hence very surprised that Sibob likes this pedal for slower, vocal sweeps - that's exactly what I like, and the MXR just couldn't get me there. The 3leaf Proton has some nice sounds. Generally more polite than the MXR. However, it's really finicky to dial in. Hard to groove when you're constantly worrying about whether you ought to turn one of the knobs by 5 degrees... Also, the 'down' mode (which I had high hopes for) is just not a great sound IMO. Next, I tried the EBS. I fell instantly in love. All three modes sound fantastic - greasy, bubbly goodness. It is ridiculously easy to dial in - importantly you can adjust the speed of the sweep from almost MXR-fast to un-usably slow. Ideal for vocal wah-like sounds or slow synth sweeps. I think it's a very well thought out, musically useful design. It think (from what I can hear) it has a baked in low pass for your dry signal, so that the filter is only really affecting the mids and highs. Then, there is an internal trimmer that you can set to mix in the dry highs if you wish, so that the wah stuff is only going on in the mids (where it matters). This is a really sensible approach - you get to keep your dry lows (and, therefore, your job as a bass player) and you get to keep your presence in the mix with your dry highs. But there's still a load of funky stuff going on. Moral of the story: you're going to need to try a few envelope filters! The variety of opinion here demonstrates just how personal a choice this is (probably more than any other pedal type) Moral No 2: the EBS is worth considering.

I was just thinking about this. My dream 'wah' pedal would actually be the [url="https://ironether.com/pedals/xerograph/"]Iron Ether Xerograph[/url] low pass filter (regular version), re-housed into a Dunlop Mini Crybaby shell. You would just need to add two external trimmers for resonance and volume (just like the mini bass crybaby), plus a mini toggle switch for 2-pole/4-pole. The treadle would operate the frequency pot. If such a thing were possible, I'll write you a cheque right now...

The 'down' mode on the EBS BassIQ is great. Hard to get a bad sound out of that pedal!