What the POG?

Once upon a time, the adventurous people at EHX did an alien audio generator otherwise known as the POG- Polyphonic Octave Generator.

In keeping up with the times, the POG evolved to include contemporary features, for instance, a bank option so you could recall your favourite settings at will. By this time, the POG was an interesting FX unit to own but those dimensions were still a put off.

Fast forward 2013, the POG sports a Big Muff foot print. Features were reduced to a pair of octave options because those were the most utilized amongst the rest.

But this year, the POG had been further shrunk into the NANO dimension retaining its 2-octave controls. This spells good news for many pedal board geek among us but what does a POG do? It is an octave generator, churning output that sounds lower/ higher than the tuning you are in. What's the benefit of sounding like that? It benefits those who are interested in having some synth-like tones or simply churning out very cosmic sounding passages in one's playing. On some days, sounding a little queer is an inspiration per se. The POG is akin to BOSS' Octave pedal but dare I say, it's a little more adventurous in its extensive format.

Digitech is dropping it

Come Summer NAMM (2014), Digitech will have this for your consideration; a no-frills pitch-shifting pedal aptly named the 'Drop'. It's capable of dropping your standard tuning to your preferred semitones as well as a full octave. This would mean you can instantly drop-tune your instrument without ever touching your guitar's tuners. That's technology for you.

Life started with this one- the original Digitech whammy pedal much embraced by the late Dimebag Darrell. Due to its pre-histortic nature, it's rather obscure & a used unit is quite prohibitive in price.

Things took a turn for the better in terms of affordability. Digitech released the XP series, one of which specializes in whammy/ wah/ polyphonic displacements, the XP100 seen above. I bought this one but had limited use for it because I don't dwell in note squealing episodes too much. It was sold for a good price.

Then came the re-issue, keeping close to much of what the original had to offer.

Along the way, an OTT variation was offered which wasn't too popular so things went full circle as you can see. It's back to basics with the Drop pedal, one which every dweeb can probably fit into their pedal boards & one which is devoid of an expressions pedal. If you take a closer look, the Drop is actually half of what this monster had to offer.

EHX: Epitome

Another great EHX release, the Epitome. This followed the 3-in-1 concept of the Tone Tattoo so you have 3 pedals in one chassis here: octave/ chorus/ reverb. For those of us who do not wish to carry separate units for our external performances, it's a neat consideration. Watch this: