Danelectro - Chili Dog Octave

A forum devoted to mod, tips and suggestions for upgrading and rehousing your VERY CHEAP commercial stompbox to near boutique excellence.
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ifeellikeatourist
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Post by ifeellikeatourist »

I got one off of ebay, hoping that it would be a decent ocatve pedal (don't ask me why), but the tracking is really quite bad. It isn't worth re-selling, so is there anything cool I can do to it?

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analogguru
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Post by analogguru »

:hmmm: you can do..... take pictures from the innards, maybe it will be traced and with the schematic it can be said more...

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Ben N
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Post by Ben N »

I don't have mine with me anymore, but my recollection is that the CD tracked (and sounded) remarkably well--much better than an Arion octave I had or an original MXR Blue Box, comparable to the Boss OC-2, which I have heard it is a clone of (unconfirmed). There is only so good you can get with an analog octave down.

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shooto
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Post by shooto »

I think it tracks surprisingly well also-

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Cow4prez
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Post by Cow4prez »

i have the cd, and it doesn't track well imo, not as well as the foxrox octron at least.

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shooto
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Post by shooto »

Cow4prez wrote:i have the cd, and it doesn't track well imo, not as well as the foxrox octron at least.
^ you're comparing a $30 to a $200 pedal...really, for $30 pedal, it tracks pretty well-

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Cow4prez
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Post by Cow4prez »

shooto wrote:
Cow4prez wrote:i have the cd, and it doesn't track well imo, not as well as the foxrox octron at least.
^ you're comparing a $30 to a $200 pedal...really, for $30 pedal, it tracks pretty well-
well you didn't say that did you?

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memphis32
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Post by memphis32 »

Also have one, and was hoping to do something to it - will try to get some gutshots soon!

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marksmartus
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Post by marksmartus »

I'm reviving this thread because I really love this pedal. I've used it for a lot of jazz gigs to play a bass sound from the guitar; sounds great with a SansAmp BassDriver DI after it. I used it on all these tracks:


Those tracks were all done with this setup:

http://www.marksmart.net/gearhack/jazzp ... board.html

I wondered for a long time why the Chili Dog tracks so much better than other octave pedals, with the output closely following the dynamics and even the TIMBRE of the input signal. Like other octave pedals, it will bounce to a higher octave when the second harmonic of the input signal becomes louder than the fundamental, but it does it in a way that is not as obnoxious as on other synths and pedals. This note bounced every time I played it, but it sounds OK:



A while back I hooked it up to a scope and realized that, instead of outputting the flip-flop's square wave like other octave pedals, it uses the square wave to gate the input signal on and off. So what comes out is the input waveform with every other cycle flattened out to zero. It is similar to the octave-down section of the Electro-Harmonix MicroSynth pedal. The MicroSynth lets through both the positive and negative parts of the waveform every other cycle, but the Chili Dog only outputs the positive part. The sound is very similar. Very cool idea.

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wildschwein
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Post by wildschwein »

I used one for a decade (probably got it around the time this thread started) but the switch died recently and I replaced with a cheap T-Cube unit. The glitchiness is part of the sound of these pedals. If you listen to Neil Young doing Hey Hey My My you'll hear the same sort of glitch from whatever octaver he was using. I also use a DOD Octoplus in the '90s and it tracked about the same --quite glitchy below the 5th fret on the low E. The Boss OC-2 isn't much better. It's just the nature of these circuits -- embrace the imperfection or get a digital octaver instead.

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