New Non-BOSS Pedals
Posted: Sat Sep 01, 2018 6:11 pm
Yesterday I received a parcel from England. Our dear nathanscribe, who was a very active SBZ and BossArea forum member years ago, repaired a vintage KORG SD-200 Signal Delay for me. And the parcel also contained the sought-after Pearl OC-07 Octaver. I was able to grab one for a reasonable price at Gumtree/UK and nathanscribe forwarded it to me.
The analog delay is really good at doing that typical slap-echo sound. The tone knob offers some sonic variations. It has a pretty high maximum delay time which comes along with a nice aliasing sound. Feedback can go to self-oscillation. All in all a solid early BBD unit which has (to my big surprise) originally been designed by Maxon (-> Maxon AD200). To my knowledge there haven't been any other collaborations between KORG and Maxon (I might be wrong, though).
The concept of the Pearl OC-07 is very similar to that of my beloved KORG KOT-401 module "Octave V". The Pearl Octaver offers two octave down modes plus an upper octave mode, which is generated by an octave up fuzz or something very close to that (the KORG KOT-401 works in the same way). The sound is really nice and warm in the low octaves and the upper octave is really cool and it freaks out in a great way if you play polyphonic stuff. Like the BOSS OC-2 it tracks best beginning at the D of a bass guitar in standard tuning. Overall tracking is very solid. Like all the other analog octavers the OC-07 cannot beat the tracking of the KORG KOT-401, which goes all the way down to the low E of a bass guitar and offers overall superb tracking and it responds to the guitar's dynamics in a beautiful way. So it cannot replace my "Octave V" at all. But it's a great early compact pedal and those who don't know the KORG unit are allowed to say that the OC-07 is the best octaver ever built.
The analog delay is really good at doing that typical slap-echo sound. The tone knob offers some sonic variations. It has a pretty high maximum delay time which comes along with a nice aliasing sound. Feedback can go to self-oscillation. All in all a solid early BBD unit which has (to my big surprise) originally been designed by Maxon (-> Maxon AD200). To my knowledge there haven't been any other collaborations between KORG and Maxon (I might be wrong, though).
The concept of the Pearl OC-07 is very similar to that of my beloved KORG KOT-401 module "Octave V". The Pearl Octaver offers two octave down modes plus an upper octave mode, which is generated by an octave up fuzz or something very close to that (the KORG KOT-401 works in the same way). The sound is really nice and warm in the low octaves and the upper octave is really cool and it freaks out in a great way if you play polyphonic stuff. Like the BOSS OC-2 it tracks best beginning at the D of a bass guitar in standard tuning. Overall tracking is very solid. Like all the other analog octavers the OC-07 cannot beat the tracking of the KORG KOT-401, which goes all the way down to the low E of a bass guitar and offers overall superb tracking and it responds to the guitar's dynamics in a beautiful way. So it cannot replace my "Octave V" at all. But it's a great early compact pedal and those who don't know the KORG unit are allowed to say that the OC-07 is the best octaver ever built.