Octavia
A fuzz with a ringing octave above the note, produced by rectification.
What the circuit does
A fuzz stage feeds a transformer and a full-wave rectifier, which folds the negative half of the waveform up onto the positive half. Folding the wave that way doubles its frequency, so an octave above the played note appears out of the signal itself rather than from a pitch tracker.
What to listen for
A clear bell-like octave on single notes high on the neck, and complete chaos on chords. The chaos is not a fault: the rectifier has no way to separate two notes, so intervals turn into clangorous noise, which is what the pedal is for.
Where it goes
The fuzz slot
Ahead of the other gain, and for some circuits ahead of everything. A vintage-style fuzz has a very low input impedance and is voiced around loading the guitar's pickups directly, so anything buffered in front of it changes what it hears.
This one is fussy about what comes before it. Its input impedance is low enough that it loads the guitar's pickups directly, and that loading is part of the sound. Put a buffered pedal in front and it thins out and stops cleaning up when you roll the guitar volume back.
Controls
- Volume
- Drive