To admit that a product of the 60s is still interesting to anyone is a surprise. But after rummaging through my bin of “the old and discarded,” I ran across a friend I had not seen in decades (many, many decades).
Let me introduce you to the Vox Octavoice I.
I acquired my Octavoice one day while giving a trumpet lesson at our university. The student mention that he had a device that I might be interested in and because of the fact that many people were experimenting with many things (fill in you own thoughts about that comment) at that time, I told him I would be interested in seeing it. As it turned out it was an Octavovce I which was sold to be used on a clarinet and not a trumpet. After viewing his device, I paid him the outrageous price of $25 dollars and took it home to see if it had any value in my trumpet playing.
Once home I was holding something that might not even apply to what I was seeking. The instrument connection was obviously not made to be used on a trumpet. Model I was made to be used on a clarinet and eventually the Octavoice II was made for a trumpet.
It took me about two hours to adjust the pickup so that it could be connected to a mouthpiece. I found an old mouthpiece, drilled a hole in the side, soldered the tube to the mouthpiece and re-figured the end of the tube to accept the Clarinet pickup. Fortunately the modification worked as I had hoped.
If you would like more information on this early electronic marvel, go to the following site to learn more…
Octavoice
At the present time, these are available on a few sites at the going price of between $199 to $299 when you can find them.
History of the Octavoice I and II
The electronic design of the Octavoice I and II was based on the tone generation circuitry used in Thomas and Vox organs. These organs used twelve circuit cards, each having a “master tone oscillator” that generated the highest pitched tones in the organ. The signal from each of these master tone oscillators was then fed serially through a number of octave “divider” networks. Each divider network would drop the frequency of the master tone oscillator by one octave. Through the use of five of these serial divider networks in each of the twelve tone generator circuit cards, the pitches needed to complete a five octave organ were derived.
The Octavoice I and II was inserted in the line between the instrument and the amplifier. The Octavoice substituted the signal from the brass or reed instrument pickup for the “master tone oscillator” in an electronic organ. The audio output from the instrument was fed through two serial divider networks, allowing the amplified pitch of the brass or reed instrument to be dropped one or two octaves.
The Octavoice I was primarily designed for use with a clarinet. It offered the ability to drop the amplified tones of the clarinet by one or two octaves, allowing the instrument to sound like a bass or contra bass clarinet. The Octavoice I also included tone filtering that shaped the tone of a clarinet to sound like an oboe.
