Aguilar Octamizer & Grape Phaser (feat. Fwonkbeta)

[Boodang]

 

I'm sure these two pedals are familiar to bass players but they've become favourites on my pedalboard so thought I'd give them a quick review.

I was watching the Andertons youtube video where they played the latest Aguilar pedals and these two caught my ear. The octamizer I thought, gave a very organic thickening of the tone and that does indeed seem to be the case. It's analogue and I know some people have said it's not the best at tracking but... I quite like that. If you play too fast or play double stops, it doesn't throw up anomalies, it just doesn't follow you and that's ok. It means you don't just have a double playing everything one octave below with ever nuance of your playing and to me that feels quite organic and pleasing to the ear.

With the octamizer you can also control the filter sound from smooth, for a nice thickening of your tone, to edgy, which almost has a slight overdrive feel to it. Separate octave and clean levels is a welcome touch that makes the sound very controllable, and the tilt eq has a nice pivot point, good for taking the edge off if it gets too bright.

The grape phaser is funky! As an alternative to an envelope filter I love it. The thing that does it for me is the color control which feeds back some if the original signal into the phase circuit and makes it quite funky.

The pedals work well on their own but my fav sound is both together... a sort of hefty funk tone.

Only oddities of note; I got an old style case with the octamizer which because of the overhang on the 'lip' won't allow right angle leads to fit (get the newer design if you're buying s/h), and when you power these pedals from a 9v psu, use an isolated supply. Initially I used a Spot One to power both but as it wasn't isolated to each pedal they were noisy, as soon as I used my Palmer isolated supply they were quiet as could be. 

I've added some clips, the last two I've put the octamizer through the Fwonkbeta which is quite fun. The edgy tone makes it a little bit more synthy sounding.

Clip1; octamiser (smooth filter) + grape phaser

Clip2; grape phaser only

Clip3; octamizer (smooth filter) only

Clip4, octamizer (edgy filter) only

Clip5; octamizer (edgy filter) + grape phaser

Clip6; octamizer (smooth filter) + Fwonkbeta 

Clip7; octamizer (edgy filter) + Fwonkbeta 

 

235_Aguilar grape + oct smooth.mp3

233_Aguilar Grape.mp3

239_Aguilar oct smooth.mp3

241_Aguilar oct edgy.mp3

237_Aguilar grape + oct edgy.mp3

243_Aguilar oct smooth fwonk.mp3

245_Aguilar oct edgy fwonk.mp3

Edited November 29, 2021 by Boodang

[Romeo2]

i love the octamizer too - as you say, being analogue it is organic in sound and feel, you learn to play it with the way it reacts to your input level (I absolutely love how it sings with my L2k, two humbuckers both on with bass backed off a little, I can dig in and it doe snot choke, and then a totally different sound and experience when I play a passive PJ squire with geezer butler emg's, right settings and P only with tone rolled off I can almost pretend a doublebass-like sound)