Cheapo Alternative To Boss OC-3 To Make My Guitar Sound Like A Bass

Duppy03

Did Behringer or Harley Benton ever make a clone or something similar?

I want to experiment with splitting my guitar signal into a bass amp playing the bass notes at a lower octive.

The Boss OC-3 looks great but a bit pricey even used

JezWynd

The Valeton OC10 is a copy of Boss OC-2, the analog precursor to the digital OC-3. Simple 1 & 2 octave down functions. Haven’t used it personally but it’s had some decent reviews.

Duppy03

Cheers, will check it out

Funkfingers

Duppy03 said:

Cheapo Alternative To Boss OC-3 To Make My Guitar Sound Like A Bass

It won't work. The pedal will make your guitar sound like a guitar with an octave down gargling sound following fractionally afterwards. (Nothing wrong with this sound, per se.) 

Hey, Hey. My, My. 

ICBM

You need an OC-3 not an OC-2 for this job. It tracks better and you can split the outputs, which you can’t with the 2.

I tried a Behringer recently and it was poor, as well as not having the split outputs.

I would buy an OC-3 second hand, so you won’t lose much on resale if it doesn’t work for you.

poopot

EHX pog, micro pog or nano pog... Just about the best out there really.

TTBZ

The OC3 isn't very good for this unfortunately. Or at least I couldn't get it to work for me, the high pass didn't actually work that well. The bass sounds more like a weird synth thing which I didn't get on with. However the Drive mode is a load of fun into a dirty amp. It takes on an octave down fuzz kind of tone and inspired me to come up with a fair few riffs.

Duppy03

Funkfingers said:

Duppy03 said:

Cheapo Alternative To Boss OC-3 To Make My Guitar Sound Like A Bass

It won't work. The pedal will make your guitar sound like a guitar with an octave down gargling sound following fractionally afterwards. (Nothing wrong with this sound, per se.) 

Hey, Hey. My, My. 

I see what you did there, very good. Rock and roll will never die.

Duppy03

It looks like the OC-3 is the only one I can find with that will do the job with regards only selecting the your top two strings to duplicate as octive down bass notes.

I can do the signal splitting with another pedal the being able to have it only work within the range of the bass notes is key to what I’d like to try and achieve

Duppy03

Could a Digitech Trio work?

Rocker

Would it not be easier to buy a bass instead of trying to make your guitar sound like a bass?

JezWynd

TTBZ said:

The bass sounds more like a weird synth thing which I didn't get on with

That's been my experience with most octave down pedals. The only one I've found that did an acceptable reproduction of octave down (and up) was the Bass Whammy pedal. I believe Digitech do the guitar version as a straight pedal minus the treadle - that might be worth checking out - don't think it will isolate certain strings though.

meltedbuzzbox

JezWynd said:

TTBZ said:

The bass sounds more like a weird synth thing which I didn't get on with

That's been my experience with most octave down pedals. The only one I've found that did an acceptable reproduction of octave down (and up) was the Bass Whammy pedal. I believe Digitech do the guitar version as a straight pedal minus the treadle - that might be worth checking out - don't think it will isolate certain strings though.

The richochet

I don't think it does string isolation

merlin

I have an ever-so-slightly weirded Micro POG that has the bass on full all the time. I'd rather not throw it away. You can gave it for the price of postage. 

Lonewolff

T-Rex Quint Machine?

pintspiller

Whatever happened to the guy that used to advertise such a pedal in Guitarist. He had a strings pedal too didn't he?

Duppy03

merlin said:

I have an ever-so-slightly weirded Micro POG that has the bass on full all the time. I'd rather not throw it away. You can gave it for the price of postage. 

That’s real kind of you thanks but o don’t think it will do the selective strings thing like the oc-3?

roberty

meltedbuzzbox said:

JezWynd said:

TTBZ said:

The bass sounds more like a weird synth thing which I didn't get on with

That's been my experience with most octave down pedals. The only one I've found that did an acceptable reproduction of octave down (and up) was the Bass Whammy pedal. I believe Digitech do the guitar version as a straight pedal minus the treadle - that might be worth checking out - don't think it will isolate certain strings though.

The richochet

I don't think it does string isolation

Digitech Drop does an octave down, not tried it though

You can get better tracking with pitch shifting (and tuning) by using the bridge pup and rolling your tone control down, as this gets rid of harmonics from your signal

Trude

I use an OC3 on acoustic to achieve what you're after (I don't need a bass amp though as it all goes through the PA).  It doesn't have true string isolation, but you can define the note below which the effect kicks in.

Sound-wise I'd say it's okay if used in moderation.  It won't be convincing if you want it to literally be at the level you'd normally expect to hear bass guitar in a rock band setting.  You also have to play to the pedal - you can't just bash out a normal rhythm part and expect it to magically create a decent bass sound.  If you can pick out clean bass notes and limit strummy stuff to the top few strings then it works okay.  For single note riffs it should work pretty well.

To improve much beyond the OC3 I think you'd need to look at a specific pickup system like the Submarine that can isolate and process the bottom two strings independently.  Every so often I check to see if anyone's made an improved version of the OC3 but all the octave pedals I find just act on all frequencies, which would sound terrible for chords.  I live in hope...

pintspiller

@merlin pm sent

Teetonetal

I have been down this road with the oc3. Nice idea but it didn't work for me, I could never get the Freq cutoff to be limited enough and it just sounded too messy.

Works best if you are doing fingerstyle. Jon Gomm gets great sound from it.