Where should a Octave pedal be placed in your signal chain?

[ichasedx]

Hello to all,

I finally received the last piece to my new pedalboard today, a Boss OC-5 Octave pedal. It's been on backorder for over 4 months. I have it running thru my effects loop 2. I've never used one before, and have been going back and forth on where in my signal chain it should be. Any suggestions would be appreciated. 

Thanks as always,

Mike

 

[kduck]

Octave/pitch effects usually go first or very early in the chain for the best tracking, but there is no wrong answer.  Best part of having in the fx loop is that you can try it in literally every spot in your chain just by dragging it around in the editor!

[theElevators]

Hey.  I can say that octaver on the Helix is great and I see no need to use an external effect.  Try a few: there's an octave effect, or smart harmony, where you specify the interval to be an octave.  

Where to place the harmonized effect?  You have several options, and it depends on the sound you want. 

 

1. very first thing in the chain.  If you have distortion later in your chain, then you will hear distorted octave sound. 

 

2. after the amp/speaker block.  If you put it there, it will sound more clean.  It will take your signal and add an octave to it.  It tracks very well and does not glitch out for me.  Compared to my old Boss MS-3 that was very finicky when processing a distorted sound, Helix works flawlessly. 

 

In my experience, harmonizer or octaver on the Helix tracks extremely well, even with all that distortion that it needs to interpret. 

 

[craiganderton]

On 8/4/2022 at 4:45 PM, theElevators said:

Hey.  I can say that octaver on the Helix is great and I see no need to use an external effect.  Try a few: there's an octave effect, or smart harmony, where you specify the interval to be an octave.  

Where to place the harmonized effect?  You have several options, and it depends on the sound you want.

 

Totally agree, after I got Helix I sold my Mutron.

 

I'll have to try your post-cab idea, I haven't done that but it sounds promising. Another option is split early in the chain to a path with compressor and octave divider. For Wes Montgomery-type jazz octaves, delay the dry sound by about 20 ms to emulate hitting the higher string later than the lower string. 

[pianoguyy]

It depends on what kind of tone you are looking for. Do you want to octave the fx or fx the octave. 

For some fx it might not make a big difference. But, the easiest example would be distortion - 

And I will take the 'octave' out of it and make it a nice harmonious 5th. 

Guitar players know the 5th is the power chord. 

A fifth then distortion will give you the power chord. 

But distortion and then the 5th will give you two guitar notes.