OPFXS Dig Deep

The OPFXS Dig Deep is a sub-harmonic generator pedal from the Italian maker OPFXS. gearnews.com described it as a new release as of October 2019, reporting that if what the Italian manufacturer says about its new Dig Deep octave pedal is true, players would not have the tracking problems that plague octave pedals¹. The site's reviewer found that whether you are playing single note lines, chords or arpeggios, it appears to handle them all pretty much flawlessly¹. The current MK3 version is listed at €240 / $279².

A sub-harmonic generator that follows the lowest note

The Dig Deep belongs to the octave and pitch family, but its approach is narrower than a full pitch shifter. It listens for the lowest note in what you play and generates a sub-octave from that note alone. gearnews.com's reviewer put it plainly: "Instead, it takes the chord and uses only the lowest note, pitching it down accordingly"¹. On the original pedal, that tracking works on just the lower three strings of the guitar, leaving the higher strings untouched and clean⁵.

The same reviewer found the tracking broad in application: "Whether you are playing single note lines, chords or arpeggios it appears to be able to handle them all pretty much flawlessly"¹. Guitar World went further in its coverage of the launch: "we would make a case for the Dig Deep as the most convincing real-time bassist emulator we've yet heard"⁶.

The MK3 carries the same idea forward. Guitar Pedal X's Stefan Karlsson reviewed it as a monophonic octaver, "meaning it only does one note at a time," with lower strings receiving octave processing while upper strings remain unaffected⁷. Delicious Audio's Paolo De Gregorio described the MK3 as "an advanced and cutting-edge octave-down pedal [that] generates a rich, monophonic bass line from your guitar signal," making it compatible with everything from 6-string to baritone guitars⁴.

The controls and inputs

The original Dig Deep keeps its front panel simple. Operating the pedal uses only two controls: a Volume for the clean signal and a Volume for the octave tone¹. The deeper functions sit behind the F micro button on top, which Pedal of the Day's review breaks down as follows⁵:

• Toggles between Fast and Slow attack modes
• Held down, enters a secondary mode where each knob controls something different
• In secondary mode, the Sub knob sets the Tone of the sub octave, with 12 options ranging from dark to bright
• Switches between Mono and Split modes of output; in Split, a Y-cable splits the Dry and Sub signals and routes them to two different places

The MK3 expands on that layout considerably. Its jacks are MIDI In, Remote, TS In, TS Sub Out, and TS Out, and it carries Ctrl 1 and Ctrl 2 controls⁷. Delicious Audio reports that the MK3 has five primary knobs, four assignable controls, 3 user presets, full MIDI implementation, and a USB-C editor⁴. The separate Sub Out is what makes the split-bass setup practical: the sub-octave can be sent to a bass amp or a separate channel while the dry guitar goes elsewhere⁷.

Dig Deep or Dig Deep MK3?

Guitar Pedal X listed the MK3 at €240 / $279². On the original Dig Deep, Guitar World's reviewer wrote that "we would make a case for the Dig Deep as the most convincing real-time bassist emulator we've yet heard"⁶.

Octaver or pitch shifter?

The Dig Deep is an octaver first. Guitar Pedal X describes the MK3 as a monophonic octaver that only does one note at a time⁷, and Delicious Audio calls it an octave-down pedal⁴. gearnews.com adds that "This unit can also be used as a pitch-shifter"¹, but the pedal's core design, following the lowest note and generating a sub-octave from it, places it firmly in the octaver camp rather than among polyphonic pitch shifters.

Videos

Click to load

Click to load

Click to load

Questions