Best effect box for fake bass?

[Kev_IMO]

Hey, I've got a couple multi-effects boxes that have pitch shifting and sometimes I'll shift down an octave to fake a bass part along with the guitar. Mixed with the guitar it adds fullness, but by itself it sounds kind of weak. I've got some software effects that sound great for this, but they have latency so bad that you can't play through them, you have to apply it after you record.

So I was wondering if anybody else here does this and what you've found to be the best for this?

[matrix]

I use The Electro-Harmonix HOG which is a totally polyphonic
Octave Generator. You can even play chords transposed an octave in real time...

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1163/1246585773_1b19d3990d.jpg

[lwclaypool]

I used a Boss PS-5 pitch shifter with a fretless guitar on my new CD "One Feather Shy" to create a stand-up bass tone. It is a monophonic shifter. It does a great job of tracking accurately, captures the nuances of the playing, and sounds natural.

I also used it the other way on this release, bumping up one or two octaves in places. You can also use a Boss expression pedal to do Digitech Whammy type effects.

[Kev_IMO]

I'll have to try those out. Right now I'm using my old digitech gsp-2101. It works alright but sometimes it gets fluttery. I mostly use it for octave doubling to simulate a clean bass sound against a distorted guitar tone and it does it alright, but I'd like to use the shifted tone by itself sometimes and have it sound more like a bass. I'm using a 7 string guitar too, so the low notes might just be out of the range that it was designed to track. It works smoother on the higher notes.

[lactose]

I was listening to one of my all time favorite CDs, Genesis Seconds Out Live, and I just noticed that the bass line on the song I Know What I Like, it a guitar with an octave box. Funny how I just noticed that after all these years. I guess they can work pretty well.

[Jim_D]

I found when using guitar that you need a very pokey, honky sound to get good octave bass. Two humbuckers out of phase (think Joe Perry's solo sound on "Dude Looks Like a Lady" or Peter Green's "Oh Well" sound) works okay, and I have read that a piezo bridge acoustic will get a good octaved bass sound. But I've never had one to try.

I always think harmonisers should be separately amped and eq'd. So if you have a bass processor that might help. It's not always very practical of course.

You also need to think like a bassist in order to sound like a bassist of course. This is not easy when playing guitar. It's my belief that a lot of the time when we say something that physical has made a change to our sound, e.g. type of guitar or tonewood, we're not just listening with our ears, we are also reacting with our other senses. So you have got to imagine the big strings and the long stretch of a bass too.