RED FISH OCTAVE AND FUZZ

The first time I came across the Tycobrahe Octavia pedal I was recording at a friend's studio. He has an amazing studio and is the kind of guy who has so much gear that he forgets what he owns (including a restored Echoplex that I drool over every time I'm there). I was tooling around his guitar room messing with different pedals for a part of a song and I asked him about a light blue pedal I had seen. He handed it to me saying "I think it's broken, it makes these God-awful clanging sounds when I play chords through it; take it home and try to fix it if you want." I plugged it in and heard the awful melting amp sounds coming from my rig and agreed with him that it must be broken (this was a while before I was building stomp boxes from scratch). I went home and did a bit of research and had my own epiphany. It wasn't broken, it was supposed to sound that way! It was a clone of the super-rare Tycobrahe Octavia, a transformer equipped octave/fuzz. The damn thing was horribly wonderful! After a few minutes toying with the knobs I started hearing sounds I had been hearing on records for years, but had assumed was some sort of studio trickery. Purple Haze, Jimi's "flute" sounds on Axis Bold as Love. Neil Young, Zeppelin, Cheesy 70's sound track stuff. This beast could go from cartoon-goofy to the sound of someone pouring water onto a hot tube amp, whilst kicking holes into the speakers. The Tyco certainly has a quality that, love it or hate it, no other pedal can touch! A lot of it has to do with the mini transformer used to help create the oct-up effect.