Streak of bad luck with octavers

[GrooveChampion]

I just built 3 chopped Boss OC2's and a UBoat, non of them work. I just get the clean sound boosted and there's a weak sub sub octave in the background. The only components that were shared between them are the CD4013 chips...could it be that they are dead?

Are you on a streak of dead pedals?

[Highsmith]

From time to time I have a streak of 2-3 failures.

After this, I usually try a couple of simpler circuits, maybe using 'mojo' parts, in order to reestablish my confidence.

[balazs.bencs]

Oh man... Same shit here. The two that are messing with me is the Darkglass B3k and the Death By Audio Evil Filter... I even etched beautiful PCBs based on the effectslayouts pictures, and built multiple ones of the Darkglass, and they don't work at all, or give shitty distorted sounds (not in a good way).

[GrooveChampion]

I decided "fuck it" and ordered two Lowrider PCB's and two different kits from Musikding

[Mulekicker]

I recently built Freppo's u235 and it's replaced my real oc2. Fairly straightforward build if you need an octave down.

[Muadzin]

I've yet to build a flanger that works. For some reason they just don't like to work for me, or they crap out on me soon after. I just can't seem to get rid of my Boss BF-2. So I feel your octaver pain.

On the plus side, just get a Nano Pog, or the TC Electronic counterpart. None of the analog octavers come even close, having that annoying glitch and piss poor tracking. Unless that's your thing of course.

[Sphere80]

  Same as Muadzin with me. I love octave and struggled with the U-boat. I would have sunk time and money into every other project out there but managed to find a great deal on a used Digitech and haven't looked back. There are no  glitch or tracking issues. At times I've forgotten it was on, they are that good now.  

  I know that goes against the spirit of this hobby, but I really needed a fast tracking, clean, non glitchy/warble octave.   The songwriting needs took precedent.

[BetterOffShred]

My glitch commander or whatever took a while but that's the one that put me back on top of the octave down pile.  I since built an Arcadiator and an Into the Unknown. Those are the funsies

[GrooveChampion]

I actually tried building the vero layout for it, didnt work either.

[BetterOffShred]

Yikes.  Maybe like Highsmith said, build a couple Si fuzzes to reestablish confidence.   I had 3 builds in a row not work once and I put them aside for a month and built some Twinkie shit for a week or two .. revisited them one at a time and figured them out.   Best of luck man, you can do It!  

[GrooveChampion]

I dunno maybe I used CD chips with the wrong suffix.

[Highsmith]

I would not trip on the b3k....I bought an original unit and found it overly complicated inside, yet pedestrian sounding.

There are way better sounding, simpler to build alternatives on the main board here.

Honestly...this brand is over-hyped.

[GrooveChampion]

Its a more expensive Bass Driver IMO, the Blower Box throws that thing out the water.

Also, I read that the logic chips are fragile and can be damaged by static shock, they were the only component shared in all the builds since I ordered 2 chips but built 3 OC2's and 1 U-Boat.