Electro-Harmonix POG3 review – the wildest pedal EHX has ever made
£599/$645, ehx.com
The Electro-Harmonix POG3 polyphonic octave generator is a very ambitious piece of kit. Ambitious in the multi-layered stereo soundscapes it wants to help you create; ambitious in its sheer complexity; and, perhaps most of all, ambitious in how much of your money it wants.
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Has that price brought you out in a rash? It might make more sense if you see this as not so much an expanded octave pedal as a multi-effects unit – because really, when you add up all the different things it can do, that’s what we’re dealing with here.
It’s a polyphonic pitch manipulator with two up octaves, two down octaves and a fifth; it’s an envelope filter that can also be controlled with an expression pedal; all the notes it generates can be stereo-panned and run through a distinctive chorus effect; and you get 100 user preset slots to fill up with your zaniest creations. A full 20 years since EHX launched the original POG, it’s fair to say things have come a long way.
Image: Richard Purvis
What is the EHX POG3 for?
While the POG3 is clearly an evolution of the POG2, it also shares a lot of DNA with the recently discontinued HOG2, which was marketed as an octave generator and synthesizer. So yes, it can do a (sort of) 12-string effect, but really this is a pedal that wants to make your guitar sound like… well, anything but a guitar.
Like the POG2, it lets you add multiple octaves to your dry signal and control the attack so notes start softly rather than with a hard guitary ‘plink’ – and that immediately puts us in church organ territory. Also like the POG2, it has a ‘detune’ slider to thicken things up even further with a chorus effect, and an adjustable low-pass filter to control the brightness… but after that is where things start getting really fruity.
First up is that added fifth interval, so you can go beyond adding simple octaves – this should add some nice harmonic density if used lightly on single notes and power chords; on anything more elaborate, you’re dancing with Dr Discord. Then there’s the option to make that filter respond to your playing dynamics, with knobs for ‘envelope’ (the range of the sweep) and Q (the intensity of the filtering).
There’s a panning knob above each interval slider, so in a two-amp setup you can space the notes out across the stereo field; and there’s also a ‘spread’ control for making the detune effect more extreme by delaying the left and right outputs by different amounts. As with the POG2, you can choose whether or not the filter and detune effects are applied to your dry signal.
Plugging in an expression pedal will let you ride the filter frequency, wah-style, or fade octave effects in and out – but don’t stop there, because you can also bend the pitch up and down by up to a full octave, crossfade between two different sounds, or freeze a chord and play over the top of it.
The one thing you can’t do is full-on Whammy swooping: pitch bends are only applied to the added octaves, not the dry signal. I’m guessing this is necessary to avoid latency (an audible delay caused by heavy digital processing), but it’s a pity.
Image: Richard Purvis
Is the EHX POG3 easy to use?
I’d recommend reading the manual but, pfff, obviously you’re not going to do that. Still, it’s definitely worth having a skim through the first three or four pages of the quick start guide… although, if you’re already familiar with the POG2, even that might not be necessary just yet.
There are footswitches for hopping through the presets (you get 10 from the factory), six sliders for balancing the different octaves, and three more sliders on the right for the note attack, filter cutoff frequency and modulation depth – between that lot, you should have enough toys to keep you busy for a while.
To go much deeper than that, however, you’re going to have to get to grips with the OLED screen and its ‘NavCoder’ button. As interfaces go, this one is fiddly. The screen is small and low-resolution, and the button – which you can press down, use as a directional D-pad and rotate as a scroll wheel – is clever but cramped. Still, the menus for changing the filter and expression pedal settings are logically laid out, and editing presets is easy enough. You also have the option of MIDI control, via in/out ports on the back.
In theory the easiest way to organise presets is by plugging in the included USB cable and using the new EHXport desktop app. In practice, this has had some delays and is still not ready at the time of writing. Oh well.
Image: Richard Purvis
Does the EHX POG3 sound good?
Is it just me, or are factory presets always a bit rubbish? Some of the 10 on offer here are OK, but within an hour of getting to know the POG3 I’d stored at least 10 better ones of my own. Mind you, ‘better’ is subjective: this pedal can be funky, it can be soundscapey, and if you’re on the right medication it can be both at once, so it really depends which direction you want to take.
Used as a straight polyphonic octave generator, it’s certainly a powerful POG. While there is a sliver of latency (which doesn’t affect the dry signal), and the higher notes can get somewhat scratchy, the basics are solid: for everything from straight octave doubling to portentous organ sounds, the POG3 has you covered. But it’s only when you bring in some detuned wobbliness and set the filter moving that the entertainment really begins.
Whatever your three favourite Electro-Harmonix pedals are, imagine them all on at once, with every control maxed out – that’s the sort of ultra-dense noisemongering potential we’re talking about here. Through a clean amp with lots of headroom, there are interesting sonic textures to be found; add overdrive and delay, preferably in a stereo rig, and the result is a whole array of absolutely monstrous gothscapes.
If that sounds like your idea of a great night, dust off that expression pedal right now – because using the POG3 without one is like enjoying a hearty dinner but leaving just before the tiramisu arrives. Messing with the filter is cool, having some notes glide down while others glide up is even cooler, and freezing chords for infinite sustain can be coolest of all.
Annoyingly, despite using a popular TRS expression pedal that’s on EHX’s compatible list (the Moog EP-3), I had to go through the calibration process every time I switched the POG3 on, otherwise its pitch changes went horribly atonal. This is presumably a bug that will be fixable once the app is up and running.
Should I buy the EHX POG3?
Sorry, but I’m going to have to use the word ‘niche’. Because, given the price difference, the key here is what you can do with the POG3 that you can’t do with the POG2… and if there’s one thing that defines the new pedal’s added powers, it’s weirdness.
So if you think the POG2 is already quite ‘out there’ enough, you probably won’t find this a worthwhile upgrade. But if you’re up for going further, the POG3 might just be able to take you somewhere special. How ambitious are you feeling?
EHX POG3 alternatives
As noted above, at least some of the POG3’s features are available at a much less daunting price point in the EHX POG2 (£319). The Keeley Octa PSI (£265) combines POG-style pitch-shifting with some very heavy fuzz, while the Walrus Audio Luminary V2 (£319) shares the POG3’s attack and filter controls but adds tremolo to the mix.
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