HamerCustomEr Posted June 2, 2021 Posted June 2, 2021 No affiliation. https://reverb.com/item/40959561-roger-mayer-purple-haze-2021-limited-to-100-this-is-4-100-hand-built-signed If I were affiliated, I would hang my head in shame. Yes, Roger Mayer is a genius. Yes, he invented the Octavia. Yes, he introduced it to Jimi Hendrix, and yes, he worked alongside Jimi in the studio. Yes, I love his pedals! Yes, I have three of his wah pedals (they are awesome), his VoodooVibe (Univibe), his germanium rocket fuzz, his Mongoose (RAT) and a bunch of his other stuff including an amp in a pedal casing, but even I feel that this latest Octavia is ridiculous. All of Roger's pedals are handmade anyway! You can get a brand-new handmade RM Octavia for $300, which is still expensive anyway, in my opinion. Roger has autographed pedals all over the place. This is a blatant cash grab. Sure, there are only 100 of these out there, but that is still $200 000 of pedal. The only major difference in this one, as far as I can tell, apart from the wedge casing, is that this that it has a custom wound ferrite transformer, similar to the original pre-pedal version (which was not in a wedge shaped casing at all, or even a pedal form at all). Believe it or not, even at this outrageous price this thing is not even point-to-point! It is on a printed circuit card. Oh, wait, here's a "discounted" one in the UK for just shy of $1800. https://reverb.com/item/38342973-roger-mayer-hand-signed-limited-edition-purple-haze-octavia By the way, the garden-variety $300 version comes in a super-cool rocket casing. (No, Jimi never played this form of the pedal, but who cares? If he had lived, he sure would have.) Here is an autographed rocket version: https://reverb.com/item/40572204-roger-mayer-octavia-rocket-fx-autograph-model If you read this far, I'll tell you a little secret. Although I have sixteen of Roger's pedals (One of my pedalboards is all Roger Mayer pedals for heaven's sake!), I don't have his Octavia. For octave effects, I prefer the Foxrox Octron. If anyone cares, let me know, and I will explain why.
0054 Posted June 2, 2021 Posted June 2, 2021 4 hours ago, HamerCustomEr said: have sixteen of Roger's pedals (One of my pedalboards is all Roger Mayer pedals for heaven's sake!), I don't have his Octavia. For octave effects, I prefer the Foxrox Octron. If anyone cares, let me know, and I will explain why. Yes, explain, please!
HamerCustomEr Posted June 3, 2021 Author Posted June 3, 2021 The Octavia tends to be a very in-your-face type of sound, and because of that, you cannot really use it more than once or twice an evening. (It reminds me of the person who uses the word banal over and over, or the word cogent. Once per day is plenty!) Despite the large number of pedals I have, I actually use all of them very sparingly. Unlike other versions of the Octavia, the Foxrox Octron lets you not only blend in your clean signal, but also to vary the amount of octave up, and... octave down as well! Octron is both an Octavia and an octave divider in the tradition of Mutron/BOSS OC2/DOD Octoplus. On top of that, you can adjust the Octron so that it tames the octave up signal into a more pure octave-up sound with less treble and and fewer harmonics. In my my opinion, it makes the pedal much, much more useable. I was sold on the pedal by a demo featuring a jazz player! It sounded so tasteful and thick with the blended clean, up, and down signals together. The current version of the Foxrox Octron, the Octron3, has a toggle switch on the outside to enable this change, while the original Octron and the Octron2 have a dip switch inside.
ARM OF HAMER Posted June 3, 2021 Posted June 3, 2021 Only 2K? well then I'll take 2!😉 Honestly why would you buy that? No doubt Mayer IS a genius but that is just plain silly. I wonder what the actual cost of the materials involved in making that? Yeah I know your paying as much for who made it as for what it is and what it does and it is the original but still. That IS insane.
santellavision Posted June 3, 2021 Posted June 3, 2021 Peeps, I just bought a new Fuzz/Octavia that is freakin' awesome. The Jackson Audio Modular Fuzz. I've had a love/hate thing for Fuzzes and Octavias. This one rocks. Killer fuzz tones that are switched out with optional circuit boards. (It comes with a Modern Fuzz, my favorite and a FuzzFace board) Killer by itself and has a switchable octave that is icing. Incredible tone shaping on both with mixing. Definitely check it out! https://jackson.audio/products/fuzz-modular-fuzz
ARM OF HAMER Posted June 3, 2021 Posted June 3, 2021 1 hour ago, Jakeboy said: ...and yet I’ll bet they all sell....but not to me 😎 There IS a buyer for most everything.
The Shark Posted June 3, 2021 Posted June 3, 2021 How much are they, if you don't want to buy a dozen?
kizanski Posted June 3, 2021 Posted June 3, 2021 To quote the inimitable @MCChris: "Hold on - Let me get my credit card!"
tbonesullivan Posted June 6, 2021 Posted June 6, 2021 On 6/2/2021 at 2:31 AM, HamerCustomEr said: The only major difference in this one, as far as I can tell, apart from the wedge casing, is that this that it has a custom wound ferrite transformer, similar to the original pre-pedal version (which was not in a wedge shaped casing at all, or even a pedal form at all). Believe it or not, even at this outrageous price this thing is not even point-to-point! It is on a printed circuit card. That is definitely strange. It's also a huge PCB in there, which looks a lot more complex than the inside of the "rocket" version. Did the one hendrix used have the transformer like that? Also, I'm just curious, but what was the "pre-pedal" version like? I can't find much at all about the Octavia from before Jimi got one.
HamerCustomEr Posted June 6, 2021 Author Posted June 6, 2021 2 hours ago, tbonesullivan said: That is definitely strange. It's also a huge PCB in there, which looks a lot more complex than the inside of the "rocket" version. Did the one hendrix used have the transformer like that? Also, I'm just curious, but what was the "pre-pedal" version like? I can't find much at all about the Octavia from before Jimi got one. Yes, the one Hendrix used had a transformer, but it wasn't in pedal form. Roger just brought an electronics box to the studio, and turned it on and off himself, as well as futzed with all of the controls until they got the sounds that Jimi wanted.
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