Tascam bass trainer

[theshadow2001]

I was wondering about the tascam BT1 MTII bass trainer. Does the unit offer a cheat to getting songs down with no over all benefit to the user (apart from getting the song down a bit easier) or does it offer real potential to help improve your playing?

[Pruitt]

In essence, all that it is is a CD player that you can also plug your bass into. Yes, it offers some features such as being able to change the playback speed of a song down without changing pitch, and/or changing the pitch without changing the speed of the song. It also allows you to increase or decrease the sound level of typical frequencies used by the bass, as well as offering some basic effects, but that's it. It's just a CD player that you can plug your bass into.

Having said all that, I love mine! I find it useful, but I don't think it's a "cheat" or really makes it a lot easier to learn songs. But it is small, compact, travels well, and is very useful if you're in an environment where you need to practice quietly with headphones. That's why I have mine and it fits the bill perfectly.

Good luck and have fun!

[alembicf1x]

If you are just looking to slow down phrases to learn them, there are better alternatives out there. I tried the bass trainer, and was not happy at all with the sound quality.

I would suggest www.ronimusic.com, try out their amazing slow downer, works for macs and pcs and the sound stays fairly consistent when you start slowing things down (if you have a decent computer). With the bass trainer, the sound starts to sound warbly and it becomes difficult to hear the bass parts when things are slowed down.

The cool thing about the tascam is the ability to plug in and play along with the music, and the portability.

[jgbass]

I have the Tascam Bass Trainer and I think its biggest advantage is for travel. Nice to be able to put a CD in, plug in the bass and play thru headphones.

I tried running it through my stereo. Wanted to learn some songs, but I found it didn't have enough power when run through the stereo even with volume maxed out. It does zap out bass frequencies, but not 100% and does not work at all well for double bass zapping because of the overtones.

I think they recently upgraded it, but the model I have I didn't find it very user friendly, so it has mostly been shelved.

[theshadow2001]

I saw the amazing slower downer and was very impressed with what I saw of the examples given on the site. Unfortunately my PC is a bit on the crap side in terms of space (my gmail account has more space than the C: drive ) It would be alot more convenient to just throw a cd into a tascam than changing it to mp3 format or some other similar file on my pc to work with the amazing slower downer.

The idea of portability doesn't have much hold with me either as i won't be using it outsdie the house. Maybe I might give it a miss.