That is one fabulous idea!

Maybe we should add a Drop Tune Pedal to the list of the Crying Tone re-issues.

The HOG can do this nicely, but it’s pricy and way too feature-filled to be a plausible choice for someone looking solely for a drop-tuning effect. You can either use the root slider or the +5th slider in octave down mode and bend the note to taste with the expression pedal; I used this method to tune down to B for a drone band I’m playing in, but I had to stop because it doesn’t sound quite right with distortion no matter whether the dirt is before or after the HOG. On a clean guitar, it works great and sounds surprisingly natural.

I’ve tried:

Boss DF-2, MXR Bass Blowtorch, Fulltone Full Drive II, Maxon OOD-9, Zvex Box of Metal, Boss ODB-3, Way Huge Fat Sandwich, EHX Graphic Fuzz, MXR Blue Box, and both the NYC and the XO Little Big Muff (I don’t own all of those, though).

When you run the dirt into the HOG, you wind up with a digitized sound that sounds absolutely great when you blend in the dry signal with a few intervals turned up. Using it to tune down gives you a really synthetic sound that isn’t intolerable, but certainly not a tone worth chasing. Proper use of the filter will allow you to get by, but the other guitarist in my band is a real tone snob and so this method just couldn’t fly.

It’s difficult to describe the problem you get when you run the HOG into the distortion – it was the most pronounced on the Box of Metal (which I returned near immediately) and least noticeable on the Graphic Fuzz. I guess I would say that it introduces a subtle fizziness and gives you a highly synthetic sounding tone. The part that irked me is that the problem doesn’t arise on the +1 or -1 settings, and is much less noticeable even in the more ‘extreme’ slider shifts. It seems it’s only when you try to tune specific pitches with the expression pedal that you run into trouble because I’ve used HOG -> Big Muff for fuzzy basstones on more recordings than I’ve used an actual bass for, and in an experiment, I played a ‘guitar’ solo running a bass shifted up two octaves into the Graphic Fuzz just to see how it sounded. I was far from disappointed.

I’m almost positive the problem has to do with the expression pedal because when you shift the original pitch up an octave or down an octave, it doesn’t sound the same as if you just use the +1 or -1 sliders…

you can do this with a Boss PS-5; there are several modes, one of which allows you to drop (or raise) the pitch by (iirc) 1,2,5,7,12 or 24 semitones.
i had one for a little while but didn’t spend that much time using it – but i do remember it sounding pretty good.
the only issue though – and this seems to be common with pitchshifting effects as it happens with my Micro Pog and rack effects too – is that lowering the pitch seems to slightly ‘soften’ the attack of your notes.

I take your point entirely. This said, it is difficult, in fact impossible, to drop tuning on a Deagan Electravibe! Vibraphones are rarely played in comparison with other instruments, even more so in the electric music department, and Electravibes are virtually non-existent. The few other players I have come across use them in mainstream jazz combos which is not really my aspiration…being an EHX aficionado..For the moment I use the Octave Multiplexer. Polyphonic would be cool.