I know I said last week the Klone v2 is my favorite pedal. The Electro Harmonix Micro Pog is a very close second. However, it is certainly the pedal I get the most questions about. I have had more people ask “what the hell was that” after many shows when the pog was used in a major way for my tone palate. Most pedals have a sweet spot, where they generally work best. This thing is different, if you want to keep it light, it does great, if you want to crank it, it slays, if you want to dial it in, it’s easy. Anyway, so what is it? Well the name pog stands for Polyphonic Octave Generator. There are lots of octave pedals out there, they often get paired with fuzzes for solos and are a great way for guitars to stand out in a mix. Or they get used to beef up tone when you want a larger sound without adding a baritone gtr or keyboard. There are three parameters on this pedal. Mix, which is a wet/dry blend. Which I almost always keep dimed to let the full clean signal through. With it set like this, the other two knobs, sub octave and upper octave get added to the overall summed signal. Now these octaves are not clean, they are synthy sounding , I don’t know the exact method or waveform but it's not just like a doubling effect. The sub octave, when used below noon, adds a nice low end to any gtr that is felt more than heard. Above that, it sounds like a droney synth playing along with your gtr. THe upper octave is a very chime-like synth. Unless I am using it as just a synth pedal, I almost never go past 1 o’clock. With my bass vi, in my folk band, I use this live to fill up open chords really set a wall of sound for everything else to work on. In my old indie/punk band, I had it dialed more aggressively and used it as a boost to fill out the sound spectrum or as a synth gtr sound to just take my signal to the next level. Now the key about this thing vs every other no EH octave pedal is its tracking. There are other polyphonic octave or synth pedals out there, but none I have played track as cleanly, seamlessly or better than this. It's amazing how I can play full complex chords and it adds a sub and upper octave with zero latency. If you told me it was magic, I’d believe you. I think everyone should have one, you’ll find a use for it. There are other versions. The Pog, has more parameters but a larger footprint and sounds just as good. Then a few years ago EH came out with a nano version, which has the same parameters and guts from what I understand, so I would bet it’s just as good. I have had EH pedals go bad on me after a few years of use, mainly inputs and switches. However, this pedal has seen almost constant use since 2011. If mine broke tomorrow, I would buy another without hesitation. It has also been great in the studio. If someone is a guitar player and wants to add a simple bassline, this thing does it without having to set up or bring in a bass player. Or if someone just needs a little different color to a specific layer or line, this is often the solution after trying other effects. If you’ve never tried one, stop down, I’d be happy to nerd out over this thing with whatever rig you’re playing, I bet we can get it sounding even better.