Dr. No TVL Octavia

The Dr. No TVL Octavia is a signature guitar pedal built with Troy Van Leeuwen, the Queens of the Stone Age guitarist whose initials give the pedal its name. It is an Octavia, which Dr. No is careful to distinguish from an octaver: where an octaver shifts pitch, an Octavia is a fuzz circuit that adds an upper octave to the note, producing that bracing, ring-modulated lead tone. Dr. No points players to Jimi Hendrix's solo at the end of "Who Knows" on Band of Gypsys, "as well as many QOTSA riffs," as the sound this circuit is associated with¹.

The pedal was presented in early March 2017 and is the first in a series of two TVL signature stompboxes, followed by the Dr. No Alain Johannes 11:11 collaborator's companion piece, the Raven².

Controls

The TVL Octavia keeps things to two controls, both shaped to match the pedal's artwork³:

The Blameshifter name is, per Dr. No, "inside QOTSA joke," and Delicious Audio's buying guide describes the knob as delivering "a range of fuzz tones from nasty to sweet"¹⁴. MusicRadar notes that the pedal's two controls are skull-shaped, and the maker's product page adds that the on/off light is "a custom made anatomical correct tiny Heart" under a custom glass dome⁵³.

Where it sits

As an Octavia-style fuzz, the TVL Octavia belongs among fuzz pedals rather than octave and pitch pedals, and it sits alongside Dr. No's other octave-flavored fuzzes such as the Octofuzz and the Road Runner Octave Fuzz Wah Flying Machina¹.

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