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Club Clement (Part 7: Post your basses here)

#201
On my headless 6-string I installed it myself, but Tom left room for the control unit when he arranged the knob layout. On the 6-string Anne, there was already enough room, and I installed it myself on that one, too. On the 6-string fretless, there wasn't enough room, but I took away the neck pickup that was originally there, thus eliminating the need for a 4th knob, and made room for the control unit that way (and put in a ramp instead of the neck pickup).

I think that I would have preferred to go with a built-in unit in hindsight, but it's not really a problem... so I won't spend the money swapping either of them out for internals. :)

I use the GK3 with the Roland GR-20 guitar synthesizer. :-) I use it quite a bit, in fact.
 
#202
GODSBASSMAN said:
WOW on the double neck...too complicated for me. Just reading about it makes my head spin. I enjoy simplicity.
Click to expand...

:D It's not really that complicated.

The way it's currently layed out, it's siamese twins with separate necks and pickups, going into a joint electronics package, and then you choose which twin gets to be heard.

I would like to separate them further, so they have individual pickup blends, and so both can be played simultaneously. :D:hyper:

Not so complicated. :D

Oh, and did I mention I have a Roland GK3 pickup for the fretted neck, too?! :cool:
 
#203
Hope you don't mind me picking your brain a bit more on the midi stuff, as its something I getting interested in exploring some more. :)
Are you using the midi to trigger different synth sounds that play in unison with your bass sounds or are you also sending commands for backing tracks etc?
I just bought a Yamaha MOX6 keyboard that has the full Yamaha Motif XS sound module set, plus a wide range of midi-controlable features. Any external midi-device can control it. My wife plays percussion and marimba and has a MalletKat midi-controller coming for Christmas from me (its essentially a midi-marimba controller). The Yamaha is going to be used as the sound set for it. Might be fun to be able to send midi-commands with my bass to the sound module too.
 
#204
younggun said:
Hope you don't mind me picking your brain a bit more on the midi stuff, as its something I getting interested in exploring some more. :)
Are you using the midi to trigger different synth sounds that play in unison with your bass sounds or are you also sending commands for backing tracks etc?
I just bought a Yamaha MOX6 keyboard that has the full Yamaha Motif XS sound module set, plus a wide range of midi-controlable features. Any external midi-device can control it. My wife plays percussion and marimba and has a MalletKat midi-controller coming for Christmas from me (its essentially a midi-marimba controller). The Yamaha is going to be used as the sound set for it. Might be fun to be able to send midi-commands with my bass to the sound module too.
Click to expand...

I use it in the first way you describe. As mentioned, I use the Roland Gr-20 guitar synth, and that takes care of the pitch to midi conversion. It also has built in synth sounds that are pretty ok. There is also a midi output that you could hook up to the Yamaha. Note that the MIDI pickup is just one part of the package, you also need a pitch to midi converter to translate the signal to midi information. There are limited controls on the gk3 system, is basically just a volume control, up and down buttons, and a bass only / bass ang synth / synth only switch. Maybe it could be used to control backing tracks and such, but I haven't checked that out :-)

There is also a rmc system which is highly thought of. I think it works on piezo pickups in the bridge. But I guess it's more cumbersome to install and also more expensive. And it still requires a pitch to midi converter.

I have found my GR-20 seems to not create the best midi output, though, so check that out before you go that route. I did experience trouble tracking properly in the Dave Smith Mopho while the GR-20 Seemed to track just fine.

Hope this helps, and please pick away ;-)
 
#205
I've been researching it a bit more, and did find out some of the things you're talking about. It seems that the practicality and technology for bass to midi is not as advanced as I was thinking :). I have been looking at some pitch to midi converters, and the general consensus is that the tracking is not that great on the lower notes particularly, and certain pickups work better than others in transmitting the vibration in a way a pitch converter can use.
Its not something I'll probably make a lot of use of, so I'm not sure how much money I want to invest in the whole system. Sonuus sells a plain pitch to midi converter, the B2M. It plugs directly into the instrument chord like a stomp box; no extra pickup system. It gets mixed reviews from folks, but its only $99. Its monophonic only; can only pick up one note at at time. Most reviews I read state the pickup type has a bigger impact on that particular device, I'm sure the tone and note frequency being transmitted to the device making the most difference on what it can recognize for midi conversation. I should have a pretty wide range of tones though, since I'm having a piezo bridge system installed on my new Clement, in addition to the active pre-amp and regular pup system...I may pick one up and see if it will fulfill my needs before dropping money into a more expensive system.
Thanks again for the info!
 
#206
It's true that it's not perfect, but for my use it is pretty decent still. I think there is a sound example on Tom's Web site. There is at least one on my soundcloud page, named "Fuglen fra Kapingamarangi".

I do own the Sonuus box, and I have never been able to make it work consistently. I even tried to add a dedicated graphic Eq in front of the unit to see if I could get a clean enough signal to improve the tracking, but not a chance. If you're interested, I could let you have that one to play with cheap. Trust me, you will not use it for anything useful.
The Roland unit uses 1/4th of a wave length to determine the pitch of the note, and that works fine for most of the range of the bass. You only notice the delay when you're on the lower notes on the B and E strings in reality. It's also polyphonic, and tracks all six strings at the same time. It's good enough that Richard Bona is using it... :-)

The Sonuus is monophonic. I have a sound test of the best tracking I managed to get with the Sonuus as well. I'll post it :-)

There are a couple of bass synthesizers that doesn't convert the signal to midi, and those are of course superior. Pigtronix Mlthership is one, and the Akai Deep Impact is another (although discontinued and really hard to get hold of). They won't let you control your Yamaha, though... :-)
 
#208
I manage to get the best tracking on this unit when I solo the neck pickup and increase the mid range frequencies quite a bit. That's not a useable tone for anything though, so that's why I was experimenting with the graphic eq and a signal splitter to maintain a useful bass tone too.
It's a lot slower than the Roland in tracing, too.

The best systems are those that uses sensors in the fingerboard in combination with a pickup for detecting attack. The peavey midi bass was like that. There is another system available for that purpose as well. It's not cheap either, but should track nearly perfect, as the pitch is determined based on the fret that is used, not the frequency of the note. :-)
 
#209
www.industrialradio.com.au/

Fretsense from i industrial radio... :-)

Edit: it can't be retrofitted to an existing bass though, and the bass with the built in midi device is $5000, and it's only available as a jazz bass clone... And it's not a Clement.... So I guess that kills it anyway.

I'm happy with my Roland. I think for what it is, it's a great unit. You use has to use it for what it is. :-)
 
#212
Thanks for posting up that sound file, and the description of the tonal problems with the Sonuus. Its making me lean back more toward the GK3-B again, and then shopping around a bit for a plug into pitch to midi device. It was just more appealing to have a plug into device, instead of having that big controller hanger off the bottom of the bass. Oh well, can't have it all I suppose :)
So now the question is, do I have Tom install it for me, or wait till the bass comes in put the the pickup system on "aftermarket"?
 
#213
No problem! :-)

The most appealing solution is to have an internal unit installed. Or have tom install the external unit or at least make sure the knob layout makes room for it.

I find the gr-20 nice. But it may be discontinued now. But I'm sure Roland has a viable solution available. It has built in sounds and midi out, and it's probably cheaper than any other converter in the market :-)
 
#214
I found an internal system with pickup from Roland, the GK-Kit-3B on Musician's Friend. It interesting because I couldn't find any information for it on Roland's official site...only the external mounted pickup and controller.
Looks like a pretty big electronics package. It would probably require a lot of extra routing for the space on top of what I've already got going in; plus 5 extra spots for knobs, switches, and the led. Then additionally the output for for the cable. Things would get crowded looking on the bass body anyway. Its also seventy dollars more before installation costs, so maybe just the GK-3B would be a better way to go still. Decisions and compromises.:confused: hmmmm...
 

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