Recommend an Octavia / Tone Machine clone?

[rfurtkamp]

For my can't live without octave: Scrambler and Blender. Blue box is a close third but it's a sometimes thing, and I have it dialed in for a 70s electric Hot Tuna/Neil Young type splat more than octave.

Non-octave (fuzz, not distortion):Test Pattern (and a custom one-off that takes the Test Pattern circuit and adds some significant options and voltage starve (since I starved the original on and off and thought it'd be good to have built in versus switching PSUs when I wanted that. It's a shortwave splat/trem/oscillating box of fun there's really nothing else like, not particularly useful unless starved for standard musical stuff, but for texture/outside stuff, it's essentially me in a box. Sadly, the makers wouldn't do more of them, so I had an outside party whip me up one with some mods.

Should add I'm using them mostly into clean amps or amp models (Fender BF-type typically, sometimes faux tweed), 6L6 tube amps with no tube distortion existant (I hate, hate, hate power tube distortion), and a Jazz Chorus. That's a big thing on any of this stuff - they sound worlds different into Vox or Marshall or Orange-type amps.

[KaosCill8r]

Hey Tabbycat, could you point me in the direction of that Roland fuzz build? Wouldn't mind building that for my self.

hey kaoscill8r,

this is the one i used. fredrik posts occasionally as freppo here and on other forums. he's the brains behind the raygun youth chaos fuzz. his site is worth checking out for original circuits and reliable veros of classic circuits.
http://parasitstudio.weebly.com/stripbo ... zz-section



it's an interesting fuzz. that draggy-lag fuzz thing makes it a bit different from the usual. good luck with your build.

Thanks Tabbycat. will definitely be building that. Sounds crazy.

[K2000]

I'm tempted to sample a few and then decide what I like/don't like about them. I can listen to clips of the Dano French Toast on youtube but I'm forgetting how it actually behaved (and my setup is completely different other than my guitar now, too)

I found the French Toast to be a bit wild, a little harsh too. Maybe a little too much treble. Your guitar and amp will make a difference though. I also don't like the shallow stomp switches on the food series... they are good for always-on situations and for trying out different sounds, but not as user-friendly as other stomp switch styles.

I have a modded HBE UFO fuzz I would like to sell, message me if interested.

What mods are done to it? I have one too but mine isn't modded.

The octave up switch is now a momentary switch... octave is only when you hold the switch down. UFO is a great sounding fuzz overall, and IMO it has the most noticeable octave up tone (some other octave ups are practically nonexistent below the 12th fret) but I actually don't like the momentary switch - I thought I would.

[KaosCill8r]

They are awesome fuzzes. That was my first fuzz, the one that began my fuzz lust, though I have a big box reissue Rat that I got years ago. I never regarded that as fuzz. I love the octave fuzz in the UFO. I think the non octave fuzz is wher the pedal really shines though. I would change the switch back to stock and hang onto it. You can never have too much fuzz in my opinion.

[tabbycat]

For my can't live without octave: Scrambler and Blender. Blue box is a close third but it's a sometimes thing, and I have it dialed in for a 70s electric Hot Tuna/Neil Young type splat more than octave.

Non-octave (fuzz, not distortion):Test Pattern (and a custom one-off that takes the Test Pattern circuit and adds some significant options and voltage starve (since I starved the original on and off and thought it'd be good to have built in versus switching PSUs when I wanted that. It's a shortwave splat/trem/oscillating box of fun there's really nothing else like, not particularly useful unless starved for standard musical stuff, but for texture/outside stuff, it's essentially me in a box. Sadly, the makers wouldn't do more of them, so I had an outside party whip me up one with some mods.

Should add I'm using them mostly into clean amps or amp models (Fender BF-type typically, sometimes faux tweed), 6L6 tube amps with no tube distortion existant (I hate, hate, hate power tube distortion), and a Jazz Chorus. That's a big thing on any of this stuff - they sound worlds different into Vox or Marshall or Orange-type amps.

hey rfurtkamp, thanks for your recommendations. always interesting to see what similarly-inclined minds are using. contemplate the madness in your method.

not familiar with the blue box or test pattern so will investigate both. not into gatey or splat so may have missed them because of that, but will give them a hearing in any case. the test pattern sounds as if it could be useful.
am working on ideas for integrating into a feedback looper. am bored of it as it is as a passive looper. was trying to work out a way to mix a stuttery lfo-fragmented feedback with the dry signal in a way that didn’t sound too random. an ongoing never-quite-resolved project.

hopefully i’ll be boxing the blender and scrambler this weekend. also got a dba harmonic transformer on vero floating around collecting dust. tend to do things in lateral bursts rather than pursue one thing to conclusion, consequently am badly behind with boxing.

as for my tastes, am a univox superfuzz clone (me in a box) for fully blown apocalypse (multiple germanium pairs on a switch for clipping, tone scoop trim-pot plus tones1/2 on a three-way switch, octave on-half/off switch) and modded joyo voodoo octave (foxx tone machine clone) for the cleaner octave and c1968 non-octave fuzz. am going to play around with the diodes in that at some point. lots of untapped potential still.
plus the roland ad-50 for a down-and-dirty brit glam rock fuzz. there are a few other things that i play with but they are more toys than front line.

am surprised by your amp preferences. best sounding amp i ever owned was an orange rocker. my pedals loved it. but it does add a whole other layer of colour and unpredictability into the equation. and limit scope. can see how, if you want six colours of octave fuzz, they might not all make it through those dirty valves untainted.

will look forward to hearing your stuff on ilf somewhen.

[rfurtkamp]

Test Pattern is essentially a feedback looper in a box, I have a schematic of the unit I had built for me (it varies a bit from stock) around here somewhere, and the PCB layout. It's not a hard circuit (he crammed a lot into a small space, I will give him that on the redesign). There's a stock (from Devi back in the day) layout as well.

My amp preferences, keep in mind I'm older. Back when I started, you couldn't swing a pile of cables without hitting a Bassman head etc for $100 - you couldn't give them away. I've always been a loud, clean, get the rest from pedals guy (and I play clean a LOT of the time). It was Fender or Marshall or third-rate off brands in the Chicago area (you couldn't go a minute without hitting a Silvertone or Supro etc at a garage sale or thirft store, you couldn't give them away), and I wasn't a Marshall guy.

My base philosophy on amps is "You can't take away dirty" so I go with a clean platform to start.

I like the Orange sound occasionally but the modern modellers have that down to a point where I don't feel the need to pay the crazy premium to get it.

And my stuff, there's a metric ton at the link in my sig, all free, because I'm that guy.

[frigid midget]

For my can't live without octave: Scrambler and Blender. Blue box is a close third but it's a sometimes thing, and I have it dialed in for a 70s electric Hot Tuna/Neil Young type splat more than octave.

Not really on-topic, so srry for hijcacking the thread for a sec...

But I just got a blue box, as a noise/glitch machine more than anything else. It works great for that, but I was wondering: Is it normal that the fuzz seems to have a rather short cut off, opposed to a long or even just normal sustain? Cause with the blend control dialed back a bit, I can get pretty juicy stoner riffage going, beyone just random chaos. Also: Everywhere I read, the 'c11 mod' is highly recommended, supposed to be a great little upgrade. So great even that I might not have to bother putting it on a toggle switch So is your bb kept stock?

[rfurtkamp]

Yea, mine is stock. Zero issues, it is what it is. I accept things as that generally and don't go chasing phantom improvements that may or may not work out.

[Uncle Grandfather]

Creepy fingers makes a mean tone machine clone.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBCz94vIgQo[/youtube]

[tabbycat]

Test Pattern is essentially a feedback looper in a box, I have a schematic of the unit I had built for me (it varies a bit from stock) around here somewhere, and the PCB layout. It's not a hard circuit (he crammed a lot into a small space, I will give him that on the redesign). There's a stock (from Devi back in the day) layout as well.

My amp preferences, keep in mind I'm older. Back when I started, you couldn't swing a pile of cables without hitting a Bassman head etc for $100 - you couldn't give them away. I've always been a loud, clean, get the rest from pedals guy (and I play clean a LOT of the time). It was Fender or Marshall or third-rate off brands in the Chicago area (you couldn't go a minute without hitting a Silvertone or Supro etc at a garage sale or thirft store, you couldn't give them away), and I wasn't a Marshall guy.

My base philosophy on amps is "You can't take away dirty" so I go with a clean platform to start.

I like the Orange sound occasionally but the modern modellers have that down to a point where I don't feel the need to pay the crazy premium to get it.

And my stuff, there's a metric ton at the link in my sig, all free, because I'm that guy.

hey rfurtkamp, good to thear from you.

have perused the interwebs and rustled up a reliable schematic for the test pattern from mixed sources. i listened to your demos here for it and am obviously curious about your mods. the power starve is straighforward. but not sure what else is going on. lines between lines. curious.

also had a listen to your soundcloud page over the weekend. i'm no jazzer, know a bit of miles and a bit of mingus and that is basically it, so i can't make any meaningful jazz associations (i feel that's where you are coming from) to describe your stuff. but i was listening to some opera and lieder over the weekend and when i came to listening to your things some of the phrasing and rhythms reminded me of schoenberg's pierrot lunaire. sounds like a pretentious link, but there it is. that came to mind. anyway, magick was the one i went back to. it's good to hear your work.

re older, i'm no newborn either. it makes me smile how people obsess over teisco, etc, now. when i first started playing, smashing up gear at the end of a set seemed like an occasional fun anti-encore thing to do. youthful exuberance etc. so we used to load up on £20 kays to wreck for easy attention at key gigs. the local guitar shop used to take hundreds in part ex (from beginners who wanted to progress on to something they could actually play) and would put them aside for us, the smashers. now they are madly collectible.
i still have a little sunburst tesico from back then and have become quite attached to it. but i'm pretty sure any £100 squire now could run rings around it for tone and playability. but older, i know that one.

anyway, have totally derailed this octave fuzz thread for the moment. aplologies to op. but thanks for the update.

[rfurtkamp]

have perused the interwebs and rustled up a reliable schematic for the test pattern from mixed sources. i listened to your demos here for it and am obviously curious about your mods. the power starve is straighforward. but not sure what else is going on. lines between lines. curious.

I can provide the schem of the modified version I'm pretty sure, let me double-clear with the designer.

also had a listen to your soundcloud page over the weekend. i'm no jazzer, know a bit of miles and a bit of mingus and that is basically it, so i can't make any meaningful jazz associations (i feel that's where you are coming from) to describe your stuff. but i was listening to some opera and lieder over the weekend and when i came to listening to your things some of the phrasing and rhythms reminded me of schoenberg's pierrot lunaire. sounds like a pretentious link, but there it is. that came to mind. anyway, magick was the one i went back to. it's good to hear your work.

Yea, I'm closer to the classical stuff than some jazz to be honest, my father was a huge classical head and I went to the Chicago Symphony regularly growing up, didn't listen to *any* rock music etc until I was ten or so - then metal, then jazz, then weird.

That particular album was an exercise in limitations, each song is two tracks (faux duet), with an arbitrary length of approx 12 minutes for the 12in12x12 project. I also went with few toys and gizmos just because as well.

re older, i'm no newborn either. it makes me smile how people obsess over teisco, etc, now. when i first started playing, smashing up gear at the end of a set seemed like an occasional fun anti-encore thing to do. youthful exuberance etc. so we used to load up on £20 kays to wreck for easy attention at key gigs. the local guitar shop used to take hundreds in part ex (from beginners who wanted to progress on to something they could actually play) and would put them aside for us, the smashers. now they are madly collectible.

Yea, and the US Peaveys too. I gave one away not two years ago.

i still have a little sunburst tesico from back then and have become quite attached to it. but i'm pretty sure any £100 squire now could run rings around it for tone and playability. but older, i know that one.

Nostalgia is a powerful thing, it really is - I love a few pieces of gear from that time but I agree 100% the newer junk is far far better. I have a couple Squiers better than the student model Fenders and Gibsons *ever* were except in cosmetics.

anyway, have totally derailed this octave fuzz thread for the moment. aplologies to op. but thanks for the update.

It's ILF, we derail all the damn time!

[BoatRich]

That test pattern is so cool holy shit. Rfurtkamp I just saw your review from like 2011 and the sound clip with the HM2 and the one with the blue box/reverse delay are worth whatever it costs alone.

[rfurtkamp]

It doesn't cost, there's never been another run of them past the few made (including the Test Pattern 2).

I've got permission to release the schem from my designer, but it's a very early one before we made a few of the big changes. Looking to see if I have any later.

[BoatRich]

It doesn't cost, there's never been another run of them past the few made (including the Test Pattern 2).

I've got permission to release the schem from my designer, but it's a very early one before we made a few of the big changes. Looking to see if I have any later.

That would be awesome! Is it a hard circuit I've been meaning to learn to start building stuff

[rfurtkamp]

It's simple but the problem is that there's several variants/options out there, and I'm not sure that there's an "accurate" one if such a thing exists.

The person who built a lot of them cursed the circuit like the day they were born, and like Devi at the time, wouldn't build another for pretty much any price.

It's simple as described but the consistency of stuff from that era was...not exactly there.

I went through two builders before finding one who could actually do one in any stretch of the way.

One thing on the DIY stuff relating to the TP: which version of the SM etc do you use (versus what's in it), do you include the chaos and noise switches not present in the real one , etc?

We went down a weird hybrid road plus the starve on my second - it doesn't make *any* sound on some settings, some knobs don't do squat in some settings, etc. We added things pretty much because we could. It's superior to the original TP by a long shot but loses the faux choppy trem weirdness clicking that the original has in the mods (but becomes far more of an oscillating synth/weird sputter pedal while simultaneously being able to do more standard fuzz stuff.

I've had the Test Pattern from Hell for 8-9 months now, and I'm still finding new stuff in it. It took me a good 2 years to get consistent with the original, and it still can pull something out that surprises me from time to time.