Making friends with PROCTAVIA

[Behrle]

I recently purchased a Proctavia pedal and even after hours of fooling with various settings with several different guitars and three different amps cannot seem to find anything really satisfying or musical. I realize we are all different and satisfaction is relative on a personal level, but I seem to generate fuzzy, not-in-tune artifacts rather than anything resembling an upper harmonic. Any suggestions? I've been playing for 48 years and have a pretty good grip on side-of-pick harmonics. If anyone can help, great...otherwise I have 27 days left to return it! Thanks!

[Josh Fiden]

I recently purchased a Proctavia pedal and even after hours of fooling with various settings with several different guitars and three different amps cannot seem to find anything really satisfying or musical. I realize we are all different and satisfaction is relative on a personal level, but I seem to generate fuzzy, not-in-tune artifacts rather than anything resembling an upper harmonic. Any suggestions?

Classic Octavia type effects definitely take a bit of practice. Here's where I'd start... turn the Proctavia volume up so you drive the amp a little hard, and turn the boost all the way down. Now use your neck pickup and try picking single note lines around the 12th fret. Don't forget to listen to Purple Haze for some inspiration!

Please post how you make out.

Josh Fiden
Founder / CEO

[James Santiago]

Yup, that's the best setting, no boost and driving a great tube amp. That's pretty much what this is: http://www.voodoolab.com/audio/Hazy.mp3

Also Tim Pierce does some great stuff here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rd179MkG ... annel_page

Chords can sound really cool with the classic Octavia effect. Here's some great stuff Mike Landau did years ago. He's got a real unit, but the same settings apply. He likes the neck pickup, no boost, drive the amp.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3q9SBym4Xvo

[mibu]

from what I found out with my unit, the proctavia works best with vintage style pickups (with not so hot output), especialy single coils. with other pickups just try to reduce the volume on the guitar till you get a better octave response from the pedal.

another nice thing to try is to add an overdrive pedal, set a little darker, after the proctavia (this is especially useful if you run a clean amp), to get sustain and roundiness to your tone.

[sasquatch]

dude, its all about the guitar, try using your pickup switch, vol and tone knobs. its best in front of a dirty amp. the two ways i commonly use it is
1- for huge chords, bridge pickup, full vol, full tone.
2- for cool hendrixy leads, neck pickup, tone all the way off, vol to suit the need.

i always run it with the pedals vol knob on full and the boost right down. love this pedal.
you can get some really cool organ kinda sounds by lowering your guitars vol knob, in front of your amps dirty channel.
try this and see how it goes. it does definitely take some getting used to.