Low Rider: the Pearl Octaver

[madbean]

Here's a possible upcoming project. It's the Pearl Octaver, which does one and two octaves down, and one octave up.

Up until now, the only DIY version I know of used SMD IC's, so decided to have a go at making something a little more through-hole friendly. It was a total PITA to get a good layout, but I have more or less succeded. The octave down can be a little glitchy, which may be due to the two CD4013's I used. I have a couple others which I'm going to try out to see if that remedies it. Or, it may just be fundamental to the design, I honestly don't know.

The octave down tracking is really good, otherwise...pretty spot on. The second octave down comes through pretty well when blended correctly. The octave up is more subtle than some of the other octave effects I've done, but I was able to dial it in with the trimpot. I have only tested this with clean guitar so far, so feeding it a distortion might bring more of the octaves out. Even clean, it sounds pretty darn badass!

I had a little noise which I was able to eliminate by moving the 9v wire around. That may need to be relocated to a different part of the board. Overall, it's a real keeper, so I think a few of you might get into this.

More info on the Octaver: http://gaussmarkov.net/wordpress/circuits/octaver-clone/

I will be doing a demo of this one sometime this week.

[thatirishsob]

Put my name first on the list for purchase when this things availble!

[night-B]

Wow! Amazing build and Pcb faceplate. This sounds cool!
If you sell the PCB one day, I'm in  

[bigmufffuzzwizz]

sounds awesome!! i can't wait to see it complete and for sale!
is that a purple pcb i see?

[redbean]

¡Órale, vato! 

[Myramyd]

Awesome!

A couple of questions about this one:

1. What does the other knob do?
2. If the other knob isn't Gain, is the pedal at unity when kicked in?
3. It would also be nice to have a "blend" knob to mix the amount of dry vs. wet.

This would be a darn cool project. My POG (old case) doesn't really fit on my board well so it would be nice to have a more compact octaver without paying two large. I use one up and one down on a few songs.

J

[gtr2]

very cool!

[madbean]

Each knob is a blend. The fourth one dials in the clean signal, so you can mix whatever amount of clean and octave you want.

[lincolnic]

Oh my. Yes, please.

[night-B]

What do you put on your knobs to prevent shorting?

[maysink]

Each knob is a blend. The fourth one dials in the clean signal, so you can mix whatever amount of clean and octave you want.

wow. this one may require a demo!

[madbean]

What do you put on your knobs to prevent shorting?

On those I used some of Barry's 'Pot Condoms' from guitarpcb.

[Diamond]

That looks awesome! I'd definitely buy a PCB if you should decide to offer them. No other company sells projects like this one.

[k.rock!]

Now this is exactly what I was looking for!! I want to build an analog delay in the same box with this and with the aid of a volume pedal and a ceramic slider create some very spacious volume swells... Hope to see this one soon Bean!

-Kaleb

[k.rock!]

More info on the Octaver: http://gaussmarkov.net/wordpress/circuits/octaver-clone/

I will be doing a demo of this one sometime this week.

Hey Brian, did you ever get around recording something with this pedal? I'm really curious about it...Also, did you build this to Gaussmarkov's specs or did you modify it some?

Thanks dude!

-Kaleb