Roger Mayer Octavia

Octavia History

March 1967: Purple Haze

In early 1967, Roger Mayer was helping Jimi Hendrix develop new sounds for his new musical project. In February 1967, Roger ran Jimi's guitar through a frequency doubling device he had built, and this sound was used for the solo in Purple Haze. Only Jimi's second single, Purple Haze's March 1967 release forever changed the pop music landscape. The solo was notably otherworldly and sounded like no other guitar tone previously heard. Roger calls the the new unit the "Octavia" while Jimi refers to it as the "Octavio."

A new guitar effect is born

For achieveing an incredible feat like introducing a new tone to the musical vocabulary, Roger does face a lot of scrutiny on the internet as to whether he really invented the effect or not. Frequency doubling of a fixed waveform (like a sine wave) was a known and extremely common electronic principle. The basic electronic effect is observed when rectifying ac main voltage, usually 50 or 60Hz, into a steady dc voltage for a power supply. The rectified voltage's frequency doubles to 100 or 120Hz. The same idea was used for radio frequency manipulations. Old textbooks label these circuits "frequency doublers." Roger Mayer absolutely did not invent the "frequency doubling" electronic circuit, but he did deliver a frequency doubling device for guitar to Jimi Hendrix, which is a great achievement.

What is also certain is that no prior octave up guitar device has been presented so far, and an avalanche of imitators would soon follow in Roger and Jimi's footsteps.

The frequency doubling portion of the Octavia is incredibly simple. How it works is described here.

Series feedback preamp

The transformer frequency doubling trick is quite simple, but the catch is that you need a decent amount of input signal to drive the transformer. A guitar alone can't quite do it, so it requires a preamp boost the signal.

It has been noted that the Octavia preamp resembles a schematic floating around from the Helios pro audio company for a line amplifier. At least one forum thread exists that attempts to cast doubt on Roger's work. Roger actually worked for Olympic studios which is where Helios started, so I don't see why there is any controversy about it really. You can take a look at the Helios schematic here.

The series feedback preamp, which can have 2 or 3 transistors, is a signature part of his pedals. Series feedback allows for maximizing the input impedance, which is a good thing to do on a input amplifier. This topology was made possible by the dual polarity nature of transistors, and was being explored by the 1950s. There isn't anything special about it, except that it is unusual to see in the world of guitar pedals.

The original preamp was powered by 24V, a standard power choice for discrete transistors designs. Roger has said 24V power was used for studio sessions, and that a optimized 9V version was used for stage. Higher voltage increases headroom, and thus allows for a greater range of clean boost before hard distortion kicks in.

Roger Mayer Pre-Wedge Octavia (1967)

The original unit used to track the Purple Haze solo was actually made of two boxes, a driver (preamp) unit and a frequency doubling second unit (possibly just the transformer and diodes). Both of these early boxes were thrown away as trash according to Roger. Oh well. Roger claims there were 15 versions of the Octavia between the Purple Haze units and the first wedge unit.

Roger Mayer "Wedge" Octavia (1967-1970)

At the end of 1967, Roger Mayer came up with a wedge enclosure that he used for the small batch of pedals he produced over the next few years. Roger maintains each is a little different and were all hand made. They were received mainly by famous working musicians of the day. One in particular stands apart from the rest, and that is the unit used by Hendrix for the Band of Gypsies album. This is known online as the "BOG" unit.

Tycobrahe Octavia (1973-1977)

The most notable Roger Mayer Octavia inspired pedal is the outright copy called the Tycobrahe Octavia. One of Roger's units was given to the Tycobrahe company of Los Angeles for repair. Roger is on record saying it was Keith Relf's, Tycobrahe founder Jim Gamble claimed it was Noel Redding's, while other Tycobrahe employees recollect it was Jeff Beck's. No definitive story seems to exist. While it was there, someone copied the circuit. Jim Gamble claims he copied it in "Stompbox." Roger maintains that the 9V operated Tycobrahe Octavia was a copy of a 24V Roger Mayer Octavia. There is much debate as to whether or not this is true or whether it really matters, but the Tycobrahe developed its own following due to it being the only "Octavia" you could buy before Roger released his commercial version circa 1980.

Roger Mayer Rocket Octavia (1980)

The first version of the commercial "rocket" enclosure Octavia is easily identifiable by the optical footswitch, which looks quite different that the ubiquitous mechanical stomp switch. Roger never reissued the transformer circuit (to my knowledge), but instead switched to a BJT splitter type arrangement as used by nearly all of his early imitators (except Tycobrahe).