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Double Bass Audio Sprockets ToneDexter

#243
Kristian said:
Are you guys using the normal or the bass version? I got mine yesterday and I'm looking forward to have some fun with it today! :)
Click to expand...

The bass firmware. The tuner sensitivity is tailored to the low end, I believe. And, the EQ points are tailored for bass as well with the bass firmware.

I hope you love it! It’s a pretty cool piece of kit.

Don’t forget that if you play other instruments, if you reload the general firmware it won’t erase your bass wave maps. You can’t really flip back and forth at a gig, but if you play other instruments on different gigs all you need to do is re-load the firmware.
 
#244
Im finding that the interplay between the pickup and mic sound is not always predictable. After feeling that the pickup sound is too thin when blended and communicating with James about it I went thru to get a better feel for what is happening and it seems like some WM's work with the pickup better then others. In other words with some WM's the mic sound sounds good by itself but not so much blended, where as with others, the pickup and mic blend sound better then the mic sound by itself. I think this has to do with some kind of phasing maybe because with the WM that sounds great at 30% mic / 70 % pickup it starts phasing a little in the middle of the range so that say 50/50 sounds weaker then either of the two ends. I like several WM's and of them a few sound best with lots of pickup and a few sound best with almost no pickup. Im not complaining, as I get more experience with it I can see that I am going to be using one or two of them al ot more then any of the others. Whats great about the unit too is that I can line those up (I start at 1 no matter where I made them with the most useful and copy and paste so that when I get to the gig they are in order of how I want to try them.) As I settle into favorites I'll just keep em there.
I think I am going to download this whole set of WM's to my computer, and then start again scientifically writing everything down as I go, so that I really know where they came from and how they were made. I know that my two most useful were either made with the Remic (woody as hell great percussive roundness to the tone feels like playing bass and works well with pickup blended in and made on the Contrabassetto) and WM17 which is now also WM2 made on Tyrolean with the Tube mic which has a fat studio sound great for duos or quieter stuff or for that wide tone under latin.
But I can feel myself wanting to settle and get to know a few really well. Gotta say when you've been playing under the band and suddenly its a bass solo and you come out strong with that mic sound and it is clear and articulate yet warm and woody, damn it is what I've been trying to get at for a long time.
 
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#245
Been Beta testing a fix for the blend (I have been getting a thinner sound when the mic and pickup are blended) ...Just another note for how responsive and excellent these two gents are.

Ya know...I used to work for Charlie Haden when I was a student, driving his bass and the plexiglass to gigs. I'd get to hang and watch the shows back stage, and after a year or so he'd let me sound check with the band while he listened from the audience, it was great. But at every one of those performances Charlie would stay and sign CD's and talk to fans until there wasn't anyone left. He would take care of his fans. I'd be bored as hell waiting for him eating stale finger food and kicking around backstage. Charlie would say, "don't take anyone for granted, if they came out to the show, I'm going to respect that" Man, I don't have any fans myself but if I did I'd act like that. But wait, I'm tying it in here. These cats James and Andy act like that. They are not bored by getting it right and hearing what the customer has to say and making their product better. It kills man.
Andy sends me a beta version of the bass software that he worked on based on the thinness of the blend me and someone else were noticing. Bam.
Really crazy better. Why? because all the stages of pickup blend sound great now: 30% mic/70% pickup sounds fantastic (solid with some air on top) 80%mic/20%pickup killing. Plus the two punch settings Ch1 and CH2 are way good with several WM's.

Played a nice trio gig the other night (MAS 16 straight up) and I didnt have to touch it all night and it sounded totally killing. The walking thump feels great and stepping forward the bass sounds like a bass.
 
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#246
Wow. That’s the one thing I always talk about when folks are interested in the TD. Possibly the coolest part is that the designers continue to innovate and have future-proofed the hardware so that we can reap the benefits of further R&D, tweaks and conversations between players.

I just did a show at a local theatre with an old country/bluegrass/Texas swing revue act. Afterward, the sound guy implored me to show the TD to every bassist in town. He was blown away by how real the upright sounded (I played slap and pizz), and that it never got mushy. The more I dug in on some of the walking the more the signal punched. He said it was the first time he had ever mixed an upright that was as easy to sit in the mix as an electric, but with an entirely acoustic tone. He’d had uprights the night before at another function in the theatre and he was clear that it was night and day in favour of the TD.

Onstage, the MAS112 was great as well. It was so controlled at the stage volume we were running. It was a pleasure to play—save those few moments when my unfamiliarity with the material caused a bit of personal anxiety. (Again, running my new fav WM of an SM 81 at the bridge, captured at slot 22.)
 
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#247
The tonedexter is awesome!
I've played the two worst venues in town (bad acoustics and bad amps) but still had the best sound I've ever had! I'll see if I can make it sound even better but I'm totally happy with the way it sounds right now. I really like that you can see what frequency that you're working with with the notch filter, I'm trying to remember what frequencies the different notes has so I quickly can filter out problematic frequencies.
 
#248
I'm seriously considering one of these, but I'm very resistant to anything that requires much beyond plug and play cause I don't like having my focus on anything but the music. An hour or two futzing at home I can deal with, but once on the gig I want maybe a minute of tweaking tops, then it's all just playing. Would this device suit me?
 
#249
lurk said:
I'm seriously considering one of these, but I'm very resistant to anything that requires much beyond plug and play cause I don't like having my focus on anything but the music. An hour or two futzing at home I can deal with, but once on the gig I want maybe a minute of tweaking tops, then it's all just playing. Would this device suit me?
Click to expand...
Totally, because after a quick read of the manual and a few minutes of training you are up and running with minimal controls to mess around with. You will then realize how easy it is to train and you'll be reaching for more mics to create more wavemaps for quickly trying out before a gig. I haven't trained with a bow, that is my next experiment, as it seems some folks are getting some good results that way.
 
#250
lurk said:
I'm seriously considering one of these, but I'm very resistant to anything that requires much beyond plug and play cause I don't like having my focus on anything but the music. An hour or two futzing at home I can deal with, but once on the gig I want maybe a minute of tweaking tops, then it's all just playing. Would this device suit me?
Click to expand...
I never have time to tweak at a gig. The Tonedexter really only needs to be messed with to create the wave maps, after that I almost never touch a knob.
 
#251
flatback said:
Been Beta testing a fix for the blend (I have been getting a thinner sound when the mic and pickup are blended) ...Just another note for how responsive and excellent these two gents are.

Ya know...I used to work for Charlie Haden when I was a student, driving his bass and the plexiglass to gigs. I'd get to hang and watch the shows back stage, and after a year or so he'd let me sound check with the band while he listened from the audience, it was great. But at every one of those performances Charlie would stay and sign CD's and talk to fans until there wasn't anyone left. He would take care of his fans. I'd be bored as hell waiting for him eating stale finger food and kicking around backstage. Charlie would say, "don't take anyone for granted, if they came out to the show, I'm going to respect that" Man, I don't have any fans myself but if I did I'd act like that. But wait, I'm tying it in here. These cats James and Andy act like that. They are not bored by getting it right and hearing what the customer has to say and making their product better. It kills man.
Andy sends me a beta version of the bass software that he worked on based on the thinness of the blend me and someone else were noticing. Bam.
Really crazy better. Why? because all the stages of pickup blend sound great now: 30% mic/70% pickup sounds fantastic (solid with some air on top) 80%mic/20%pickup killing. Plus the two punch settings Ch1 and CH2 are way good with several WM's.

Played a nice trio gig the other night (MAS 16 straight up) and I didnt have to touch it all night and it sounded totally killing. The walking thump feels great and stepping forward the bass sounds like a bass.
Click to expand...
So on this new beta version you tested, did it work on your existing wave maps or did you have to create new ones using it?
 
#253
Yeah, Im sure they will release it. Andy is just working to make it better. I think he is working on the HPF instead of notch filter option too. But it sounds like Kristian uses the notch...I dont and would way prefer the HPF.
As to play and forget, I have generally put it on the WM that I want to try for the evening, play a tune, if I need a bit more of this or that the only thing I twist is the blend knob. Now that knob offers way more usable tonality. Honestly I record myself all the time and listen back thru my amp and I am just blown away by the mic sound. It FEELS good.

works with my old wavemaps.
 
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#255
statsc said:
So on this new beta version you tested, did it work on your existing wave maps or did you have to create new ones using it?
Click to expand...

shwashwa said:
And will it be getting released to the public? I don't think I would be interested in this unit without it
Click to expand...

We are planning to release V1.33 asap. It will implement the fix for the bug flatback discovered, where some WaveMaps got thin sounding during blend. It will work with existing WaveMaps you've already got.

Now, to the topic of a variable HPF. We have been listening to all your comments, and are considering implementing the following scheme. We aren't saying for sure we're going to do it at this point, but it would be very helpful and influential for those of you who care about this to comment on this proposal:

The existing notch and treble controls would stay as is.

The bass control would be dual mode. Upper half of the range would function as is - as a variable boost low shelving filter. Lower half of the range would become a variable highpass filter (instead of the existing variable cut low shelf). So, when the knob is at center, EQ is effectively off or flat. As you turn the knob CCW, the HPF would sweep up from below 20Hz to something like 150Hz when fully CCW. Display would show frequency. Range TBD. Turning the knob CW from center would be the same as now with the display showing the dB boost of the low shelf.

All comments welcome.
 
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#256
James May said:
We are planning to release V1.33 asap. It will implement the fix for the bug flatback discovered, where some WaveMaps got thin sounding during blend. It will work with existing WaveMaps you've already got.

Now, to the topic of a variable HPF. We have been listening to all your comments, and are considering implementing the following scheme. We aren't saying for sure we're going to do it at this point, but it would be very helpful and influential for those of you who care about this to comment on this proposal:

The existing notch and treble controls would stay as is.

The bass control would be dual mode. Upper half of the range would function as is - as a variable boost low shelving filter. Lower half of the range would become a variable highpass filter (instead of the existing variable cut low shelf). So, when the knob is at center, EQ is effectively off or flat. As you turn the knob CCW, the HPF would sweep up from below 20Hz to something like 150Hz when fully CCW. Display would show frequency. Range TBD. Turning the knob CW from center would be the same as now with the display showing the dB boost of the low shelf.

All comments welcome.
Click to expand...
Yes
 

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