Boss OC-2 Octave
This, in my opinion, is one of Boss's standout effects: two octaves of blendable, analog low end. I've played several octavers, and some are good, some sound as good as this one and only offer a single octave, several track more poorly, don't represent the lower octave as well, or just don't sound as good. Digital octavers tend to have latency in their generated tone (and not sound as good). I know I can be pretty down on Boss gear, but in this case, I think they have the best pedal on offer... or, should I say "had." This pedal has been replaced by a digital OC-3, which is more of a distortion effect, and doesn't really serve the same purpose as the OC-2.
The OC-2 doesn't fill the same role as, say, my Blue Box-- it doesn't produce a thick, standalone lower octave that can be played by itself. This pedal doubles the input signal an octave down, thickening up the tone of single note runs. Like many octave dividers, it's not very comfortable with super low notes (and isn't useful down there, anyway), but for higher playing, there's a great deal of character and depth to be mined here.
This particular octaver is particularly usable because it offers level controls for the dry signal, octave one, and octave two. This allows for both a single octave blend equal to the original signal, a clean boost with subtle layering of octaves, overwhelming octaves with a little clean for note definition... etcetera, etcetera. There were never many (if any) octave boxes with this kind of flexibility and sound quality, and now that this one is out of print and the digital revolution has made a few of us look like vinyl collectors in an MP3 world, we're probably not going to see these things again.
