Octave Fuzz 101

1967 was a big year the Beatles gave us sergeant pepper's this car was roaming the streets this guy beat my beloved Celtics gone to win the NBA Finals a brand new artist named Jimi Hendrix at the scene and we were given a brand-new guitar effect the effect of octave fuzz and on today's episode I'm gonna give you all the information you need to know to decide if that's an effect you want in your rig and I'll even help you pick out the one that best suits you [Music] got a few new things in the mail so I'm gonna show those to you real quick a while back andy timmons gave me this G and I octave fuzz and it blew me away it's one of my favorite newer ones made so I went over and I met them in LA and he just smelled me a couple new petals and here they are there is a tap tempo delay this guy and we also have the hot drive so this is like their overdrive distortion so really cool these just came in so what I'm gonna do because this is an octave fuzz episode I'm gonna hook up the octave fuzz but some of this analog delay after it and give you your first taste of octave buzz on the episode here we go [Applause] [Music] before we get started here's some ground rules and they're super simple I'm playing a Gibson SG into a clean fender style amplifier any dirt you hear is coming from the fuzz pedal so that lets you compare them and understand hey same guitar same amp I'm really hearing the differences and that'll let you choose which one you like I need to give you a warning also that when I plug into an octave fuzz I go one direction it's acid blues riff rock and I'm gonna riff rock your brains out today I'm just asking for forgiveness ahead of time one thing I want to make really clear is that you can take an octave pedal and you can take a fuzz play them together and you have octave fuss but that's not really what I'm here to talk about today I'm here to talk about a specific effect that was invented in 1967 I believe it was invented by two people at the same time a guy named Jim Morris and a guy named Roger Mayer of Jimi Hendrix Fame I think those guys both stumbled onto something and what they did was they created a very unique fuzz that folded over the wave form and created a high pitch octave above the fuzz and the natural guitar sound it's a beautiful crazy unpredictable and I would say magical sound it's not for the faint of heart it's something that is in an instrument in itself you have to play to it you have to feel it and I just want to make that clarification you can put your octave with your fuzz but it's not an octave buzz going through the history of octave fuzz is quite daunting but I'm excited to try and I'm gonna start in 1967 with Roger Mayer because he's of Hendrix Fame and it's most easy to imagine and associate the story so what we have is a young guy he invents an octave fuzz and he meets Jimi Hendrix at the bag of nails in Soho London in 1967 and he hands him an octave fuzz prototype Hendrix plays it runs back to the studio and records the solos for Purple Haze and fire and that kind of started something crazy Roger Mayer become Hendrix guitar tech and there's a lot of mystery around this he would take old fuzz faces gut him out put his circuits in they would get stolen from stages it's a wild story I'm actually putting a link in the description below you can read his claims to the invention of the Octavia Hendrix actually called it TV oh then people called it Octavia and then a company called ty Cobra from California put out a later version here this is probably 1970 1969 the Octavia a lot of people have seen this I have the wooden box we have a warranty card I doubt they'll honor that a sticker I'd probably kill you if you touch the glue and then a manual which is really fun and here's the pedal it's this guy really famous really well-known and what I have that most closely links to Hendrix and kind of cuts through some of the mystery fantastic pedal [Music] [Applause] [Music] there are a few things that get you that exact sound if not better and here are two of my favorites the full tone octave fuzz you've probably seen this guy maybe you didn't realize what it was based on he put a cool toggle switch on there that lets you deactivate the octave settings so you have a normal fuzzy octopus [Music] 1968 we are introduced to the super fuzz this is a fuzz that's been used by everyone from Pete Townsend to the Beastie Boys but it came originally in a very strange form it was head unit called the psychedelic machine originally it was by a company named honey honey lasted for a little bit it was bought by a company named shinai some of you guys have heard of the Shania companion fuzz but basically there's a fuzz in here you have a rotary and the rotary goes between univibe tremolo fuzz all that stuff and the fuzz is a super fuzz so it's a really cool unit sounds amazing and there are pedal forms so you have a shehnai fy6 I believe it's called I don't have that but next up would be a 1970 univox super fuzz you've probably seen this this isn't a wah treadle it's actually just a giant ridiculous foot switch that looks awesome sound like a toy I've got two controls here 1973 the enclosures moved to red I've seen plenty of pictures of the who playing in this on the stage a little better condition really great sound then you have the Ibanez standard fuzz is pretty much a part 4 part copy of that and they gave you some sweet sliders I love the function and there's a toggle switch on the other ones they put it on a foot switch here and I've got some more versions this is a shin I rebranded so Cova they build pedals for all kinds of people put the labels on there I think the super fuzz was made for at least 25 to 30 other companies with all kinds of brand names on the badges this one serkova alternate Oh fuzz you had to use a remote foot switch to activate it pretty well but essentially the same circuit and a really good modern take of this that you can buy really accessible and really affordable is the Earthquaker devices master general check that out [Music] another octave fuzz from 1968 is the four knob fender blender this thing has hints of the Octavia and the super fuzz it's really cool it's most notable users are robin trower and george harrison it was kind of revived in the 90s when My Bloody Valentine used it and the summation pumpkins beware of a 3 knob version because it's horrible by the for not moving on to 1969 we have the amp egg scrambler now amp egg in 1968 had put out the SVT amplifier was a huge success but this not so much they made around 2000 of them they didn't really sell it wasn't respected it kind of got eaten up by all the prior other cool fuzz's that were out there and yeah kind of a sad story it was respected later on like a lot of great things there's a band called cactus check out a song called evil and you get to hear this in full action it's kind of like Led Zeppelin meets Hendrix pretty amazing and a fun nerd fact this is one of the first pedals ever to have the circuit board epoxy door gooped as we call in the kettle [Music] yeah [Music] staying in 1969 I want to show you an effect that the pedal industry owes a great debt and more than that the designer that effect the Dan Armstrong green wringer these are not pedals you plug them right into the guitar I'm gonna do an episode on them at some point but the point is this guy blazed the way for so many great designs this is so simple no controls and on and off switch and like I said you plug it right in but the circuit inside is really great it's unique to the others it's simple and there's a lot of really cool later versions of pedals that came from this a few of those variants that came from the Green Ranger are the love pedal believe I put some controls on this don't ask but very similar kind of thing it's using the green wringer with another fuzz pedal this is a new favorite came out not long ago the purple platypus that's like to reissue I believe and it's cool it has the red llama the old classic way huge inside of it and what that allows is you have the green ring or octave fuzz alongside like a lighter gain overdrive ability the red llama goes really heavy but it also goes lighter so you can do some things where you almost feel like you're playing a ring modulator or a light broken-up octave fuzz and that's you [Music] [Applause] you one more from 1969 is the Kay fuzz tone this is literally made with what seems to be the plastic from a toy factory it has a treadle and on an off switch and the treadle controls the fuzz level which also controls the perceived octave effect you can just peel the back off you know like this and there's the schematic really simple really fragile but really cool you've heard this on youtube elevation [Music] 1971 gave us a couple of very amazing things first off Kid Rock was born that's worth mentioning and the Fox tone machine was invented by a 19 year old guy in his garage it's covered with a strange fuzzy material it has an outer I'm not saying it's unpleasant it's not pleasant but it's there but it sounds amazing three knobs in a toggle switch it's classic it's on so many recordings and so many pedals came after this that were inspired by this circuit [Music] [Music] my favorite variations of the Fox tone machine are the danelectro french toast ironically that 19 year old guy grew up and bought Danelectro and reissued all the pedals that we know so in a way this is the most official re-release or replica yeah it's a great pedal really affordable there is the yo-yo voodoo octave I think it sounds good haters are gonna hate it has a couple parts that are backwards I'm not sure how that happens in the assembly process but it works and for the money you know maybe you want to try it out full tone did the ultimate octave anything like fuller does sounds great built like a tank can't recommend his stuff enough and then there is the prescription electronics experience octave if you're fortunate enough to have one of these or you can find one it's top notch out of all the stuff shown today this is up there this is a plus plus material you have the fuzz on and off you can remove the octave so you have a normal fuzz and then the octave up fuzz and then a swell feature which is kind of like a boss slow gear swell in on the attack of the note yeah the great you [Music] it's 1974 and a fairly new company called mxr releases two new pedals one is the Dyna Comp compressor and the other is the blue box distortion fuzz I put this in here even though it's slightly different it doesn't focus so much on the high end octave as most everything else I'm showing today but it has to be here it's a sub octave fuzz it has a lot of texture and harmonic in there and Jimmy Page made it famous but it's really cool and [Music] lastly I want to show a couple newer ones that I feel a really unique this is the stomp audio labs octopus I've showed the son of previous episode but it has upper and lower I'm not really sure what's going on with the circuit but it's really fantastic and then last but not least is the pro analog ascension now Scotty says this is a bridge between vintage and modern and very tweakable and I would have to say having played all these and spent a lot of time here prepping this episode this is really really across the board I feel like I could pull off a lot of these sounds from most any octave fuzz with this one pedal so it's one that I'm gonna play for you and you should check it out [Music] [Music] today's record time is brought to you by not one record not three records - records Jimi Hendrix are you experienced and Led Zeppelin into the outdoor so let's start with are you experienced some of you guys were there and you put the needle down on side one track one Purple Haze came on and you were some of the first people in the history of ever to hear octave fuzz I congratulate you and I want to know all about that in the comments and then there's in through the outdoor track called fool in the rain Jimmy uses the MX our blue box which is the octave down kind of weird thing fantastic track great record if you haven't heard these please join the club and if you have put them back on and just remember the good old days in the comments below I want to know about your favorite track ever it with octave fuzz on it because maybe I don't know about it and I need to either way check these off that's all for this episode if you liked it please hit like subscribe to the channel and hit the bell icon for notifications of future episodes I want to give a massive shout out and a thank you to Scotty over at Pro analog devices he's super helpful he was playing these octave buzzes before I was a glimmer in my parents eye and he helped me dig through some of this history so go check his stuff out I talk about him all the time but go right now go to the website buy some pedals you'll love them and until next time have a wonderful day

Channel: JHS Pedals

Views: 373,016

Rating: 4.9467154 out of 5

Keywords: JHS, JHS Pedals, Guitar, Guitar Pedals, Electric Guitar, Guitar Player, Guitar Playing, Pedal Demo, Guitar Demo, New Guitar Pedals, Josh Scott, Guitar Gear, Music Gear, Guitar Tones, Pedal Tones, Good Guitar Tone, Best Guitar Tone, Analog Guitar Tone, Guitar Sounds, JHS Guitar Pedals, JHS VLOG, JHS Videos, Octave Fuzz, Fuzz Octave, Octave Pedals, JHS Fuzz, Fuzz Pedals, Jimi Hendrix Pedals, Jimi Hendrix, Fuzz Effects

Id: WtBIP5X1HgA

Length: 19min 11sec (1151 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 07 2019