Not sure if it's the area of Northern NE, but this has happened a few times in the past months. It'll suddenly show up in the system and be delivered within a day.
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Ambient/Post-Rock/Textural bass playing thread
- Thread starter ttasselm
- Start date
In Canada, I had to wait almost 3 months for an instrument to clear customs last year. I am hoping you’ll have better luck.
And right after I posted, now it says it will be here today. Go figure. We'll see what happens.
@JES
if you read the gear pages, a lot of people *who haven’t touched* the iridium or hydra think they’re both a vst in a box.
if you want a touch-sensitive pat keyboard built in, the hydra is it. it’s a lot of fun to make notes modulate with that.
you have a linnstrument, iirc. right now the hydra is the one that has mpe. the iridium mpe is in beta. hs desktop is somewhat smaller than the iridium. iridium will power the linn through usb. hydra doesn’t. though i couldn’t get the iridium to play notes (might be the mpe thing)—it did play sequenced stuff from the linnstrument.
i personally found the hs easier to get around, while the iridium is probably easier to get pleasant sounds. i’m not particularly enamored of the presets in either.
hydra has microtonal scales that can be applied *per patch*; iridium does not.
finish: i’m a big fan of thinner finishes, as i feel they don’t choke the instrument.
if you read the gear pages, a lot of people *who haven’t touched* the iridium or hydra think they’re both a vst in a box.
if you want a touch-sensitive pat keyboard built in, the hydra is it. it’s a lot of fun to make notes modulate with that.
you have a linnstrument, iirc. right now the hydra is the one that has mpe. the iridium mpe is in beta. hs desktop is somewhat smaller than the iridium. iridium will power the linn through usb. hydra doesn’t. though i couldn’t get the iridium to play notes (might be the mpe thing)—it did play sequenced stuff from the linnstrument.
i personally found the hs easier to get around, while the iridium is probably easier to get pleasant sounds. i’m not particularly enamored of the presets in either.
hydra has microtonal scales that can be applied *per patch*; iridium does not.
finish: i’m a big fan of thinner finishes, as i feel they don’t choke the instrument.
To add to this, yes, a lot of people who primarily use VST's say it's a VST in a box.
To hell with them, I say.
As far as the MPE midi thing, one huge advantage of the Iridium over the HS... you must use some sort of midi hub to use a USB controller in the Hydrasynth, with, with the exception of the Linnstrument which has 5 pin midi, is just about all MPE controllers. Also, you have to go into the settings of the Hydra and turn MPE on or off.
The Iridium implements this perfectly, as you can be very specific about what Midi port does what. I have my 5 pin coming from my MPC (the brain of everything). I also have a Roli Seaboard Rise plugged into the Iridium's USB port. You can specify what gets MPE, so what's nice is, if I want to keep my 5-pin in for regular Midi control, it does that, and then it treats anything in the USB instrument port as an MPE instrument, so I can go back and forth, without having to change settings. I think it's a major pain in the ass that if I want to use a regular controller with the HS, I have to turn off the MPE support, as well as reconnect without the additional Midihub I bought. I would have gladly paid another 100 bucks to have had the midi hub in the HS, like just about every other synth out there.
Thanks @steubig . I think my plan is to wait and see how things develop when the new Iridium OS is no longer in beta. I'm not in a rush, for once. EDIT: thanks also to @lordradish -- it sounds like Iridium is the way to go, but I'll wait until the latest version is out of beta, and then see if there's a place where I can order and return it if need be.
@steubig For thinner finishes, does that mean clear urethane, or something else, or is that colour independent? I'm not an expert on that particular issue.
@steubig For thinner finishes, does that mean clear urethane, or something else, or is that colour independent? I'm not an expert on that particular issue.
@lordradish
the iridium is great. you have the 3.0 beta and i don’t. once i get mine back from the shop i’ll probably update it. that being said, right now its “official” current firmware doesn’t support mpe, which was my main point.
i’ll have to reconnect the linn to the iridium when it get it back. didn’t read note information through the usb port when i first got it, but maybe that’s a system programming thing. it wasn’t plug and play for notes, but it read the sequencer fine????
i’ve requested mpe per patch rather than global for the hydra. agreed that the usb on the hydra could have been implemented better.
pat is crucial for what i do, so i really want it on the iridium. there are patches i’ve written where it was frustrating to not have it. rolf has some similar mod routes on his ios apps, so i know it’s there in his head.
@JES
imo, you can’t go wrong with either synth. in fact, i think they play well together (and that will be even more evident with pat, imo).
i don’t have colored finishes, so that’s above my experience level.
imo/e, heavy finishes mean that the wood is locked in plastic (or paint), so less wood vibration. some people love that sound. i don’t. (i went from sealer only to oil to as light as i could get fodera to do for their urethane—or whatever it is they use.)
i also dislike pickguards for the same basic reason. (something for which i’ve been vilified on this site.)
the iridium is great. you have the 3.0 beta and i don’t. once i get mine back from the shop i’ll probably update it. that being said, right now its “official” current firmware doesn’t support mpe, which was my main point.
i’ll have to reconnect the linn to the iridium when it get it back. didn’t read note information through the usb port when i first got it, but maybe that’s a system programming thing. it wasn’t plug and play for notes, but it read the sequencer fine????
i’ve requested mpe per patch rather than global for the hydra. agreed that the usb on the hydra could have been implemented better.
pat is crucial for what i do, so i really want it on the iridium. there are patches i’ve written where it was frustrating to not have it. rolf has some similar mod routes on his ios apps, so i know it’s there in his head.
@JES
imo, you can’t go wrong with either synth. in fact, i think they play well together (and that will be even more evident with pat, imo).
i don’t have colored finishes, so that’s above my experience level.
imo/e, heavy finishes mean that the wood is locked in plastic (or paint), so less wood vibration. some people love that sound. i don’t. (i went from sealer only to oil to as light as i could get fodera to do for their urethane—or whatever it is they use.)
i also dislike pickguards for the same basic reason. (something for which i’ve been vilified on this site.)
Thanks. Did a search on TB and lots of arguing about nitro vs poly vs oil but nothing conclusive. Seems like thin urethane is the same as thin nitro tonally, though both are not as thin as an oil finish, naturally.
it depends on what you want.
i want a really resonant instrument (as much as a solid body can be). some people do not. fender finishes had two thick coats for a while—a white undercoat and a colored second coat (at least my 66 j did). imo, that’s gonna give a much more compressed sound. some people really want that; some don’t.
@JES
if the modular/synth hook-up is important to you, i’d spend a lot of time comparing how the iridium and hydra do that. i’m not into that stuff, but my basic sense is that the hydra has that as a core feature/interface. it’s not clear to me how core it is to the iridium.
??
if the modular/synth hook-up is important to you, i’d spend a lot of time comparing how the iridium and hydra do that. i’m not into that stuff, but my basic sense is that the hydra has that as a core feature/interface. it’s not clear to me how core it is to the iridium.
??
I'm not looking for the two kinds of synth to directly interact, but I like the idea of being able to just plug my Linnstrument into the Iridium, so it's grab and go. Everything would come together in a mixer if I was doing modular and Iridium live, but that's a long way off.
@steubig I realized I assumed I knew what this meant but now I'm back here because I don't think I really do. So what do you mean?
I have an acoustic guitar and a ukulele bass and both have bodies made out of thin layers of wood. Not sure what their finishes are but it's nothing like the thick urethane on my G&L Tribute Fallout. I feel their bodies and necks resonate more against me than my other instruments. Is that what you mean? The most "alive" necks I've ever played have been a Modulus neck and the roasted maple/tung oil finished one on my main 4-string, but I don't know if "alive" -- the note sort of launches off the fretboard -- is the same thing as "resonant." When I think of "compressed" I think of limited dynamic range, like what a compressor does, but maybe it means something else here. I have an NS stick with Wenge neck and ash body with what appears to be a very thin finish if any, and I'd call it "pingy" and compressed sounding, but I think a lot of that has to do with the stainless steel frets that jut way up into the sky, and the density of an all-Wenge neck. Or I could be complete full of ***t.
Insert cliche about talking about sound here.
PS -- thanks for taking the time with long Iridium answer. Really appreciated. I think it's a "buy in a little bit but with a return policy" scenario for me.
it's sort of like obscenity, it's not easy to describe, but i know when i hear it . . .
seriously, though, i think it's more reasonable to compare sold body instruments to other solid body instruments.
your main 4-string bass is graphite neck on oil-finished wood body, right? the notes launching could also be how the body is working. unamplified, knock your knuckles on the body and tell me what you hear. same with the g&l.
by compressed, i mean the note doesn't breathe, there are fewer overtones in the note decay, there's less "bloom" and there's less crosstalk between notes in double stop.
or i'm tripping.
following is all supposition/musing.
the ns stick is probably a combo of the wenge, ash and the fact that it's a touch guitar (right?). the energy of activated the strings goes *into* the neck, which transmits to the body; the energy on plucked string goes *across* the string, which is vaguely parallel to the body, so the body picks it up quicker. the pickup might be hearing more attack and less fundamental (spit balling here). then there's how much playing surface (meat) there is on your finger activating the string (i think it's interested to see how the fingers on the plucking hand hit the string on an upright bass—way more meat). i tend think of a touch instrument being analogous in sound to a harpsichord and the bass guitar being more the piano.
it's all instrument ecosystems in my view.
fer instance, my headless basses are bolt-on one-piece bodies and they sound completely different (way more resonant) than my neck-through stuff. i attribute that to the one piece resonating and there not being any glue or other wood to disrupt that.
sunday afternoon musings.
I'm with Steuart. It's such an interesting balance, especially as you add more strings. Adding more strings means you have to make the neck stiffer, which means less resonance. In general stiffer, stronger wood is used for neck wood, and this also means less resonance (Ken Parker figured out a way around this, and Martin Keith uses what he learned from Ken to do something similar....and it's ingenious). The least amount of glue, the more resonant. One piece body with no top? More resonant.it's sort of like obscenity, it's not easy to describe, but i know when i hear it . . .
seriously, though, i think it's more reasonable to compare sold body instruments to other solid body instruments.
your main 4-string bass is graphite neck on oil-finished wood body, right? the notes launching could also be how the body is working. unamplified, knock your knuckles on the body and tell me what you hear. same with the g&l.
by compressed, i mean the note doesn't breathe, there are fewer overtones in the note decay, there's less "bloom" and there's less crosstalk between notes in double stop.
or i'm tripping.
following is all supposition/musing.
the ns stick is probably a combo of the wenge, ash and the fact that it's a touch guitar (right?). the energy of activated the strings goes *into* the neck, which transmits to the body; the energy on plucked string goes *across* the string, which is vaguely parallel to the body, so the body picks it up quicker. the pickup might be hearing more attack and less fundamental (spit balling here). then there's how much playing surface (meat) there is on your finger activating the string (i think it's interested to see how the fingers on the plucking hand hit the string on an upright bass—way more meat). i tend think of a touch instrument being analogous in sound to a harpsichord and the bass guitar being more the piano.
it's all instrument ecosystems in my view.
fer instance, my headless basses are bolt-on one-piece bodies and they sound completely different (way more resonant) than my neck-through stuff. i attribute that to the one piece resonating and there not being any glue or other wood to disrupt that.
sunday afternoon musings.
This applies to finishing as well. I love Roscoe basses, but I don't love the thick finishes that they traditionally use. It's what gives them that compression, and part of their sound though....so you have to decide what you want the outcome to be and how to get there. Pedulla did the same.
I'm not sure how I feel about oil finishes, because it doesn't protect the instrument in the least, but it most certainly does allow the wood to be resonant.
The lore surrounding a finish like nitrocellulose comes from it being so thin, but really from the fact that it breaks down so quickly, which allows the wood to resonate more naturally.
Anyway, it's just a balance with all of the other variables, as well as what will give you the sound that you want in the end. These days I work with one luthier, and I honestly haven't asked about finish. I have tried to be less controlling (tried...) when we talk about a new build. I tell Martin what I want sound wise, and what I want the bass to be, and then trust that he'll work it out....and then I play the s@#t out of it when I get it. I've been pretty obsessive about builds in the past....and it's exhausting. My motto is, find a luthier that you trust, and then trust them.
