Catalinbread Perseus DIO Synth/Sub Octave/Fuzz Guiatta Guitar Pedal

Perseus DIO

Fewer things give guitarists that fabled “riff face” more than a fuzz mixed with an analog octave down, and our original Perseus was a trailblazer in that regard. With that said, the Perseus Dio is a rightful successor to that box. The Perseus Dio greatly expands on the concept of our original device, giving you a three-voice all-analog octave-down device with adjustable octave filters. Three knobs control the mixer section, giving you one octave down, two octaves down, and a dry, boosted distortion. The Dry knob gives you a really great light distortion sound that’s more than capable of pushing your amp into overdrive, but the fun starts when you control the levels of octave-down signals with their accompanying low-pass filters. With no filtering, the octaves are harmonically rich square waves that sound like old-school Nintendo, but turning up their accompanying filter knobs smooths out the harmonics and turn them into clean octaves down. Let’s get pixelated. 

DOWN 1: Controls the volume level of the 1-octave-down signal. Both this and the 2 Down control have been tuned to provide the best possible tracking across all positions on the fretboard.

FILTER 1: This control governs the cutoff point for a second-order low-pass filter on the 1 Down knob. At a minimum, the cutoff point is ~7KHz, retaining all the harmonic richness and video game-esque qualities. At maximum, the cutoff point is ~280Hz, giving you a clean octave down with bubbling harmonics lying underneath.

DRY: This knob controls the volume of the dry signal. It is not your true clean guitar signal, but rather a boosted version of it, allowing it to mix better with the octaves. There’s plenty of volume on tap and it sounds great just by itself.

DOWN 2: Just like Down 1, Down 2 controls the level of the 2-octave-down signal.

FILTER 2: This control governs the cutoff point for a deeper second-order low-pass filter on the Down 2 knob. At minimum, the cutoff point is ~7KHz, just like “1 Filter.” However, at maximum, the cutoff point is ~140Hz to really let the “oomph” shine through at higher settings.

You can power your Perseus DIO with any 9VDC quality power supply designed for use with effects pedals.