Octanium - Octave-up fuzz

Purple Haze in a Box

"This is a great kit. Build is straightforward despite the high part count - lots of the boarrd is taken up with 12 identical capacitors. Just take care not to fry the transistors and the rest is easy. The sound is outrageous. Imagine the weird octave-up solo at the end of Hendrix's Purple Haze and that's what this pedal does. Actually it doesn't really do much else, but if you are a Hendrix fan it's essential. The gain available is huge. At full tilt there's so much fuzz that there's not much left of the original note. It becomes more musical and more useful if you back it off a bit. At the lower end of the fuzz range you get an almost gated attack which is cool. The tone control doesn't go from muffled to icepick like most do. It changes the colour of the sound and the way the octave reacts. It's pretty powerful but most people will find the place where it works best for them and leave it there. The octave effect is most pronounced when it's not being fed a lot of treble. A Strat on the neck pickup and the tone rolled off works really well. I also found that sticking a Wah pedal in front of the SweetyPuss sounded great and saved messing about with the tone knob. Chords are... interesting. Not really an ideal pedal for rhythm work. It does work well with a bass guitar though. For me the kit misses the fifth star because you can't turn off the octave effect. On the original Foxx Tone Machine you could, albeit with a fiddly little switch. On the other hand, if you want one of t" John Roberts - 14 May 2013

Purple Haze in a Box

"This is a great kit. Build is straightforward despite the high part count - lots of the boarrd is taken up with 12 identical capacitors. Just take care not to fry the transistors and the rest is easy. The sound is outrageous. Imagine the weird octave-up solo at the end of Hendrix's Purple Haze and that's what this pedal does. Actually it doesn't really do much else, but if you are a Hendrix fan this is essential. The gain available is huge. At full tilt there's so much fuzz that there's not much left of the original note. It becomes more musical and more useful if you back it off a bit. At the lower end of the fuzz range you get an almost gated attack which is cool. The tone control doesn't work exactly as you'd expect. It doesn't go from muffled to icepick like most do. It more changes the colour of the sound and changes the way the octave reacts. It's pretty powerful but I suspect most people will find the place where it works best for them and leave it there. The pedal is very sensitive to the input. The octave effect is most pronounced when it's not being fed a lot of treble. A Strat on the neck pickup and the tone rolled off works really well - see, there is a reason why the tone knob is there! I also found that sticking a Wah pedal in front of the SweetyPuss sounded great and saved messing about with the tone knob. On the bridge pickup the effect is more muddled and not really as impressive. Chords are... interesting. Not really an ideal pedal for rhythm" John Roberts - 14 May 2013