Electro-Harmonix bass octave fuzz pedal

The bass octave fuzz pedal from Electro-Harmonix is the Lizard Queen Octave Fuzz, an octave fuzz pedal built to sit well under a bass line while still working on a six-string. Premier Guitar described it as "optimized for bass with extended low-end and enhanced controls that rip equally as hard" on guitars¹. It sits in the wider field of fuzz pedals and octave and pitch pedals, combining the two effect types in one box.

What it does

An octave fuzz generates a note an octave above or below the notes you play and mixes it with a fuzzed-up version of your original signal. The Lizard Queen applies that formula to bass, where octave fuzz pedals often lose the fundamental because the circuit cannot track the low strings. Premier Guitar's reviewer found the extended low-end kept the pedal usable on bass, and noted that the enhanced controls let it "rip equally as hard on guitars"¹.

Pedal of the Day reviewed the pedal as the Lizard Queen Octave Fuzz Distortion, describing it as an octave fuzz distortion pedal³.

Design and chassis

The EHX version of the Lizard Queen is a nano-sized pedal, built in Electro-Harmonix's Nano-sized chassis. Delicious Audio's Paolo De Gregorio wrote that it is "a nano-sized version of the pedal brought to life by the engineers at Electro-Harmonix"². The compact footprint matters on a bass pedalboard, where larger enclosures take up room that a blend or DI pedal may already be using.

How it compares

Electro-Harmonix's bass line covers several ways to get a thickened or fuzzed low end. If you want fuzz without the octave, the Bass Big Muff Pi and the newer Bass Big Muff Pi 2 are dedicated bass fuzzes, and the Deluxe Bass Big Muff Pi adds more routing. For octave and synth-style sounds, the Bass Micro Synthesizer takes a different approach. The Lizard Queen is the model in the range that puts octave fuzz first²³.

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