Carl Martin octaswitch

It's easy to use except that it doesn't comes with a MANUAL OR SPEC SHEET. So you have no way of knowing what voltage or polarization is needed for the electricity input. Which is a problem because it doesn't come with a power supply. The so called manual at the Carl Martin web site doesn't give the power supply specs.

I use a Carvin guitar and Peavey 212 amp.

The OctaSwitch does make a slight noise when loops are switched but it's barely noticable.

I can't say because I just got it.

Since no manual comes with it they should at least have a complete manual at there web site (with power supply specs). Which they don't.

It's a good match for any style of music.

It works well and I would definetly get it again if it were stolen.

As far as I know there is no product that works similiar to this one.

This is an amazing product. Really very easy to use, don't need any manual to understand how to work on.But of course you can download the manual from the company website.

The sound quality is very good as expected.Don't sucks your guitar sound as it is true-bypass, intelligent conception and very well built with the best materials.I really don't understand some users comments about noise or "pops" when switching loops because mine is completely noiseless... loud on the stage or even when playing alone at home with lower volume..!!! No noise at all...??? My JM Strat, Gibson LP, ToadWorks, Xotic, Zendrive 2 pedals, Mesa Boogie Express 5:50 and Fender Blues Junior amps. sounds great.

I really believe I can depend on it.I dont have a back up.I dont pretend to duplicate all my rig insecure of any fault.I dont have a truck to carry all my rig.Carl Martin is a trusty company.It is build like a tank.I believe I can play on Iraque and survive.

Support works very well.They are very kind.Few days ago I send 1 email asking some info about AC power supply and they was very fast sending me all the information I need it.

I play a good mix of styles; rock, pop, blues, jazz, funk....If it were stolen or lost and I have the money, I will bought another one.The Octaswitch made more easy my live performances.I play guitar and sing at the same time so now it's much more easy to have all the sounds I need for itch song available with a simple single knob switch.I almost use the Octaswitch in the studio while recording my own new cd.

Very easy to use. It has 8 effects Loops. There are Send and Return Jacks for each of the 8 Loops. Connect one pedal to each Loop by connecting the Send jack of the Loop to the Pedal's Input jack, and connect the Return Jack of the Loop to the Pedal's Output jack.

There are also eight foot switches; each foot switch has an 8 position dip switch. Simply choose which Effects Pedals you want activated by a particular foot switch, say Pedals 2,3,6, by setting the dip switches "on" for Loops 2,3,and 6 for that foot switch. Easy!

I have my Octaswitch set up on my pedal board with 7 Pedals, 1 pedal per Loop. I have the foot switches set up for "Clean", "Clean Solo", "Crunch Rhythm1", "Rock Solo1", "Crunch Rhythm2", "Rock Solo2", "Special", and "Tuner". I have 1 Loop left over for the occasional Boutique Pedal when the Gig calls for something exotic.

The Pedals I have in the Loops: Loop 1 = Tuner, Loop 2 = Noise Gate, Loop 3 = Compressor, Loop 4 = Fuzz, Loop 5 = Distortion, Loop 6 = Blank, Loop 7 = Delay, Loop 8 = Boost. By selecting combinations of these pedals, I can get all of the sounds listed above in a single foot switch, instead of tap dancing multiple pedals like I used to do.

Sound quality is good. Product is listed as true bypass, and doesn't seem to color my tone when it is on. It also has a "Buffer Switch" to aid in compensating for high frequency cable loss, if desired. I leave this feature off.

I am currently using this with a Fender Hot-Rod Deville 2x10 amp. I like this amp for the excellent clean sound it delivers, and I use the Pedal Board to sculpt the sound as needed.

It is too soon to tell if it is reliable or not; as I have not had it yet 1 year. So far, no problems. It seems well made; metal case and solid switches.

I have never dealt with this company.

Overall, I like the Octaswitch. It makes live performance easier by allowing me to program each of my key sounds into a single foot switch. I leave all my pedals on all of the time throughout the Gig, and just select the pre-programmed sound I need at the moment of the song. The other thing I like about the Octaswitch is that I can get all of my sounds using my Effects Pedals of choice. It is not a "Multi-Effects" unit; it is a Switcher which allows me to choose the pedal combinations that I want in a hurry. One other thing: It also makes me look like a Pro on stage; no Tap-Dancing!

Couldn't be any easier to use. The only hard part about this thing is managing all of the cables going in/out of it and deciding what's going to go where in the chain.

My rig = Gretsch hollowbodies-->various Boss, Eventide, and Radial stomp boxes-->Fender Deville amp. I don't notice much color difference (if any) with my tone as others have mentioned. I did notice the aforementioned "pop" when switching - particularly when holding a chord and switching banks. The interesting thing though is that the popping depends on the location I'm playing at: At home in the old 1920s duplex we live in with what I assume is very shoddy wiring, I get pops (moreso when our fridge motor is running I've noticed). At our practice space and few gigs I've used this at, no pops. Not sure how I feel about that, but over time the convenience of having this pedal is starting to outweigh the pops. To each his/her own on that one. For the record, I have it plugged into a 1 Spot daisy chain and haven't tried it on battery power to see if that would make a difference. Am also considering buying an independent power supply for the Octaswitch but am tired of spending money for the time being so it can wait!

Spending over $300 on something like this was an incredibly tough decision for me to make. I'm used to getting things like Pods and Boss multi effects for that kind of cash... so coming from that kind of all-in-one buying background, it was really hard for me to suck it up and go for it. If you've done your research like I did, you'll be hard pressed to find another FX switching system in this price range.

In all honesty, I'm glad I spent the money on it now. From what little experience I have with buying boutique gear, you get what you pay for - and that is certainly the case with this piece. Incredibly rugged construction that you don't really see in this day and age of mass produced crap. The switches themselves are very solid and natural feeling, no loud/hard click-click sound when you stomp on them. The LEDs are a little overbearingly bright at times, but I stuck some white cloth tape over them and wrote which FX were plugged into each corresponding LED spot.. very handy on a dark stage. It is suggested that you put tape over the DIP switches but I haven't experienced the need to do that yet.

I doubt I'll have any problems with this product, so if you're on the fence with spending the money like I was, keep in mind you're not only paying for an effects switching system, but reliability as well. I've had this for a few months now and it's been to 2 rehearsal spaces and several gigs - no problems. Aside from the popping, but like I said: the convenience of not having to tapdance far outweighs the pops.

I emailed the US division about the popping issue twice and never heard back. Shame on them for that. Having dealt with customer service with companies like Tech 21 and THD and getting correspondance almost immediately from them, it was disappointing to not hear back from anyone at the US Carl Martin contact listed on their site. Sorry fellas, you get a 1 for that.

Overall, a great "value" for what it does and how it's built. This quickly became a staple in my rig.

One important thing to keep in mind when you buy it is you're going to be spending a Hell of a lot of money on cables, so tack at least an extra $100 onto whatever budget you've got in mind for your Octaswitch purchase unless you've already got a bunch lying around. I had to buy 2 $60 Planet Waves cable kits to get everything I needed hooked up.. ouch. Also on that note things get pretty crammed on the back of the Octaswitch with all of the cables coming out of it. If you're wondering how right angle pedal plugs work on the back of it (I was worried I'd have to buy all straight plugs), they all fit just fine. I'm using 7 out of the 8 banks (14 cables, 16 if you count the main in/out).

It's a little on the heavy side, so if you haul a pedal board around a lot like I do, keep in mind you'll be adding about 5 pounds to it with an Octaswitch.

The occasional popping is the only drawback for me. Other than that, this thing is built like a brick ****house, does what it's supposed to, and it looks pretty cool to boot. Final rating when all is said and done: 8.

This is a basic channel switcher and is very easy to loop in your pedals. The dip switches on this pedal are so tiny that it requires using something very small to toggle them on or off. If you have big hands, as most guitarist do, and large fingers then this can be a real pain in th ***. Prepare to be blinded! This thing has the brightest blue LED's I have ever encountered on a pedal. This makes it very hard to see the dip switches if you need to make an adjustment on the fly. When I say bright I mean BRIGHT!

I rated this pretty low because it does interfere with the tone of your instrument. It very difficult to believe that this a "true bypass" switch. The grounding on this unit is horrible, as mentioned in the first review, had CM taken some time to put some quality into the design, then folks would be tripping over themselves trying to get their hands on this thing. The buffer switch is a bit of a waste on this and I would recommend that you bypass it and simply add your own buffer/clean boost to push the signal. THE POPPING NOISE IS ANNOYING!! I don't use any overdrive pedals because I have plenty from my new Mesa Dual 3 channel. Not only is there horrible ground noise but popping when switching channels and it's not subtle either. Great concept, great price, but needs allot of work in the design. This one need to go back to the shop.

I would not depend on this unit...not right now. CM needs to fix the issues mentioned. My unit started to randomly switch channels on it's own. It apparently has a small gremlin living within.

Don't know I'm working with the reseller and they have been awesome.

I have been playing as a pro player for almost 20 years and I would not recommend this product if you are a touring artist or studio musician. If your a bedroom rockstar or your gigging bars then have at it. However if you need professional quality and you like CM products then pay the extra $$$ and pick up the CM Combinator 2. CM calls the octa-switch the "little brother" to the Combinator...maybe they should refer to it as the "red headed stepchild." Ironically the pedal is red.

Easy, you flip dip switches for which effect you want on. I kinda wish that they had left off the LEDs for each loop to show which one is on. When those are on in combination with which program you selected - it makes for a lot of lights.

I'm told this is a true bypass. I'd like to rip it open to confirm. Going from one high gain setting (i.e. distortion/overdrive pedal) to another does result in pops and clicks. This is pretty unfortunate. I have reasonably good cables used throughout (George Ls) I did play with my multimeter and the unit for a bit and found out that none active loops do not ground the signal to ground. This might have helped with some of the popping (i.e. the tip of the cable gets grounded to the sleve wen not activated).

This seems very solid. Threw some velcro on the back and popped it into my pedal board. No real special care taken.

Before this was released - I emailed Carl Martin to inquire about it. It looked like it had been in the works for many years. They were quick to respond (which was nice).

This works really well for its purpose. It does pop and crack a bit when changing high gain pedals. That is its only down fall. The design is almost exactly the same as the now defunct DW Labs QuickChange Artist (sold in the 80s). It eliminated midi rack gear switching which I had mounted inside my pedal board (nuts I know).

The price is good too. You couldn't build this thing for the price that they sell it (and presumably everyone still makes a profit along the way).

very easy to use and sounds great no tone loss what so ever!!!
my amp sound better than ever!!!!!!!!!!

running though a eric johnson strat with joe bardens pickups.
1)budda wah 2)boss tuner,
3)analogman king of tone 3)analogman sd1(frog)mod 4)another sd1(frog)for(lead boost),5)analogman dd6 hicutmod delay,6)boss super chorus and
then into a bad cat cubII non-reverb amp. all george l's cables
and powered by voodoo lab .............
very quiet!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

not sure yet played one gig so far and it sounded great.
only had it for one week.but built like a tank

very good.
called about what kind of power to use and got a repsonse right
away!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I've played for 30 plus years.
I play in 2 cover bands that cover a wide range of music.
rock,blues and funk!!!!!!
this is what I've been looking for!!!! finally I have no tone
sucking at all and I also have complete control of my pedals.
I've got 8 different sounds to choose from and can switch
between them with ease!!!!!!!!!! and also can have a couple of
lead boosts!!!!!!!!!!!!!