Need help with fixing a faulty pedal

[Composer of Requiems]

Hi all, do you know where I could get my effects pedal fixed? It's a Foxrox octron, it was working fine until one day after plugging it in, it just stopped working.

First up, the LED doesn't light up.

Second, when it's off, I get a direct bypass- my bass sound comes out of my amp properly. However, when it's on, the sound cuts off totally and, as mentioned above, the LED doesn't light up.

What I know is that without any power source, the bypass doesn't work at all, so I guess it must be a problem on the octaver circuit.

I've just tried changing the battery, to see if it helps, but it doesn't. Opened it up, but of course, my untrained eye can't see anything wrong with it.

Would appreciate any help I can get!

 

[itzs]

Not familiar with this pedal, but a picture of the circuit board would help..

 

[Composer of Requiems]

Will these do? I don't know what you're looking for in the photos...

 

[shinobi]

you would probably be looking for the foxrox dealer in singapore, but it would probably be pointless because i think very, very few stores in sg have the capability of repairing pedals.

interestingly, although sweelee may not be everyone's favourite store, this is one aspect in which they are superior.

but with the pedal being digital and all, i highly doubt any 3rd party could repair it. your best bet would be to email foxrox. you might have to ship it to the states but it has been done before.

 

[Composer of Requiems]

This one's actually an analogue pedal, not a digital... supposedly. It claims to be an all-analog octaver.

Thanks for the advice!

I don't expect a reply from FoxRox soon, but I'll look around the local shops, especially sweelee. I assume you mean the repair shop at the Sims Drive branch?

 

[rottenramone]

if u know how to read schematics, try to secure the octron one to track down where the circuit is open.

for this, think u better ask the peeps on thegearpage first or google

whats the goop on the middle trimpot?

 

[shinobi]

ya. i had one experience with the sims drive repair shop. but it was for an ibanez pedal that i bought from a mass order, and sweelee is the ibanez dealer. i still had to pay for repairs but at least they gave me a warranty on the repairs.

im not sure if they'll do it for brands that they don't carry...

you could email some of the local pedal modders, it could be within their expertise

 

[Composer of Requiems]

Don't really know much about electronics... guess I can try thegearpage.

I want to know what's the goop too! Could have sworn it wasn't there the previous time I opened it, but then again, I wasn't really examining it closely, just putting in battery and adjusting the settings (the parts labelled Octave Down Tone, Octave Up Tone, Octave Up Drive and the Octave Mode)

Don't really know the local pedal modders but I'll take a look around too. Will be very occupied for a while, but once I get the chance I'll drop by sweelee sims drive... or better, call them up first.

Thank you!

 

[seekz]

I would say bring it to a FOXROX dealer first,
or if not contact them directly. Usually as a
pedal maker, I'll just drop in a new board instead
of trying to trace and debug the fault. Too slow
and time consuming.

So nobody would have those except for foxrox.
Contact either ebenex or blackwoods to see how
they can help.

by the way the octron is an analog circuit,
its actually what sets it apart from most octavers

 

[shinobi]

...and the local pedal modder has spoken :mrgreen:

how's the octron at tracking a bass?

 

[Composer of Requiems]

Thank you very much for the advice!

The tracking is really good. Given that I'm not exactly very good at bass, since I heard that clean notes will be needed to track, I thought that I would probably not be able to get a lot of down octaves out of this. But surprisingly, so long as I play above an open D or equivalently fretted, the octave is generally clear... for a while.

As mentioned in the manual or somewhere on the Foxrox website (I kinda forgot where exactly), they did say that there's a certain amount of sustain before it's unable to track effectively. This threshold is reached much sooner on the lower notes than on the higher notes- so I can do maybe crotchets at 120 without problems, but long sustained low notes arn't exactly there.

I say above the open D, but it isn't really a clear-cut line- it's a gradual thing, but it's around there. Above it, it's easy to get down octaves, below it, not.

With notes lower than that, sometimes it plays down octaves, sometimes it plays the same note- I guess it's responding to the harmonic? What I did to test it was to turn off the blend and octave up, so it's just the octave down signal, and see what comes out of it.

Also, with notes way high up the fretboard (where it goes into the guitar range, as the octron is supposed to go), the octave down is very clean. Standard bass notes have an okay octave down, but it just simply isn't as clean as for higher notes.

Of course, the octave up works fine everywhere. At first it was a bit too gain for my tastes, but I adjusted the settings and found a smooth sound I like.

Do note that this is from memory, since now that it's not working I can't really verify everything I said above. But I loved the sound a lot, so if I can't get this repaired somehow I might consider getting another one. Pity they cost so much. I got this off another softie (and it seemed to be working pretty well when I got it...)