Darkglass Anagram Multi FX Announced

[pfschim]

watching all your efforts with great interest. I'm very interested in a multi-FX device like what the Anagram hopes to be, but at the moment, I'm still pretty happy I decided to wait to buy one. Just feels like any number of things may just be not quite fully baked yet, and I hate feeling like a live beta tester.

I'm going to keep lurking and reading about all your experiences.

Hope the Anagram matures swiftly!

 

[hitman9696]

I have just updated both Darkglass Suite to 5.7.1 and my Anagram to OS version v1.2.0.361. I have 23 presets on the Anagram and none of them are now visible in the Presets Dashboard. They did before the update.

I have searched for an official Darkglass "bug reporting" forum / email etc but cant find one. Anyone have any ideas? As this is a new product where there will be "glitches in the matrix" I think its imperative to be able to roll back the OS to the last stable version used. Especially if you make your living with this unit and are not confident that the newest update wont cause you problems.

Yeah everything with Suite and Presets got corrupted with the latest updates. Nothing syncs correctly on my end also. I think it's going to take a while for the Anagram platform to reach stability. As long as the team is dedicated to work on it consistently and provide regular updates, it'll reach its full potential.

 

[IvanBassist]

Tonight I sat down with Anagram and had one goal: Make the envelope filters sound good. I’m happy to report that I was able to make it happen.

The trick, for every bass I own, was to stick a gain block in front of either filter option and crank the gain. Adding 20db of signal to the front of the filters makes them respond more like every analog envelope filter I’ve ever owned. This then requires compensating for the gain increase somewhere downstream, which is a pain. To me this is indicative of the input sensitivity on the filters not being tuned very well by default and is something I’d like to see Darkglass modify in the future.

Maybe this is just a me thing, but using everything from a Jazz with flats to a Dingwall to an MTD, and all of them were able to achieve decent results by boosting 20db ahead of a filter block. These basses all have a reasonable range of output. None are massively hot or quiet. The one exception is my Dingwall Super J with the pickups in the all-on position (bridge and middle in parallel with each other and then both in series with the neck) which admittedly is a pretty high output, as is that bass with bridge and middle in series, but these days I don’t use those settings very often. I tried them, and even there a 20db boost was the lifeline the filters needed to sound good, though this those settings I could get by with 10-12db.

20dB Wow. That’s a lot of gain.

I can plug in my Super P or Super J straight Into one of the filters and get it to function normally.

As a matter of fact, i just published a YT video playing with envelope filters

 

[silky smoove]

20dB Wow. That’s a lot of gain.

I can plug in my Super P or Super J straight Into one of the filters and get it to function normally.

As a matter of fact, i just published a YT video playing with envelope filters

My Super J (3X SF2 pickups and Glockenklang preamp) can barely get usable filter action with either filter in the all-on and BM-series positions. Pickup height is within Dingwall spec per Sheldon’s setup guide videos. The SF2s are even hotter than the stock FDVs. By comparison my 3Leaf Proton sounds great with all the knobs at noon.

 

[IvanBassist]

My Super J (3X SF2 pickups and Glockenklang preamp) can barely get usable filter action with either filter in the all-on and BM-series positions. Pickup height is within Dingwall spec per Sheldon’s setup guide videos. The SF2s are even hotter than the stock FDVs. By comparison my 3Leaf Proton sounds great with all the knobs at noon.

Strange. Mine has FDVs, which are lower output, and I can get both filters to open up fine

 

[Murph_Orpheus]

So I just did some form of Darkglass/Neural inception by capturing my chain on the Anagram in the Quad Cortex just for the fun of it. The capture sounded great!

 

[Tino Dejam]

I have recently listed my Anagram for sale on Reverb in case anyone located in Australia or USA is interested. Selling as my Quad Cortex already covers most of my workflow so I'm streamlining my setup.

 

[geowis]

I’ve had the same issue, though all of my presets are still on the Anagram. I used it this morning at church and it worked fine. I’m hoping we will see another update within the next few days to fix the problem.

I've just finished installing the update, and all seems fine with my presets showing.

 

[Acebassmusic]

I have just updated both Darkglass Suite to 5.7.1 and my Anagram to OS version v1.2.0.361. I have 23 presets on the Anagram and none of them are now visible in the Presets Dashboard. They did before the update.

I have searched for an official Darkglass "bug reporting" forum / email etc but cant find one. Anyone have any ideas?

Just downloaded the new OS version v1.2.1 and yay the presets now refresh and are visible in the User Presets Dashboard. However not all of them seem to be transferring over to the Preset Hub / User Presets like they did before and I cant see a way to manually include them.

 

[hitman9696]

Thanks for the update Darkglass, it did indeed fix the presets in Suite!

 

[Djadja]

Has anyone used aftermarket power supplies (sorry, I didn't read through the entire thread)? If so, do you need 2 amps or can you get away with less? I'm looking at a Sweetfoot which provides 1.5A.

 

[hitman9696]

Has anyone used aftermarket power supplies (sorry, I didn't read through the entire thread)? If so, do you need 2 amps or can you get away with less? I'm looking at a Sweetfoot which provides 1.5A.

I order one from Aliexpress based on Darkglass' power requirements:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32681822109.html?spm=a2g0o.order_list.order_list_main.5.6f3b1802HLpIcH

I haven't tested it yet, just got it yesterday but should work (9V 2A center negative).

 

[Barticus]

I've just finished installing the update, and all seems fine with my presets showing.

Yah mine updated without issues

 

[sunbeast]

20dB Wow. That’s a lot of gain.

I can plug in my Super P or Super J straight Into one of the filters and get it to function normally.

As a matter of fact, i just published a YT video playing with envelope filters

Are you using the Cali76 into the Anagram in the video? Possibly boosting the input gain that way?

 

[IvanBassist]

Are you using the Cali76 into the Anagram in the video? Possibly boosting the input gain that way?

In the video yes, but it’s set to unity gain.

Also, I’ve also shared the preset I used, but tweaked it to be used only with the anagram.

 

[NeonVomit]

So yesterday at rehearsal I tried running the Anagram via 4-cable method with my MT500v2 and it was really something. Gives me the flexibility to get in there and adjust amp parameters on the fly instead of having to bend over like a fool each time. And the great thing is now I can do the same with my beloved Ashdown ABM 600 head - incorporate that goodness right wherever I want in the signal chain.

Wonderful setup in general, but the problem now is how do I use an expression pedal? Basically I want to use a volume pedal (I do a lot of swells and what have you in our shows - at rehearsal I was doing them with the volume knob on my bass and it wasn't great) but since the expression pedal input is one of the FX loop inputs, how do I fit it in? I know you can use a splitter cable on the Send, but that's not going to be feasible to use on stage with a head....

Any ideas from the hive mind?

 

[Bassguitar1919]

Not sure if this has been discussed yet, but I watched Scott's Bass Lessons' video on the Anagram last night, just a video of the podcast with Ian and Scott discussing it. Near the end of the video Ian mentions that eventually the unit will be capable hopefully of doing models of pedals on its own without the use of a computer or tablet or seperate database......basically you would plug in the pedal to the effects loop and it runs a signal through the pedal capturing it. Now that will be impressive if that's something that they incorporate. I didn't know that that was in the future plans until yesterday.

 

[Mojo34]

Not sure if this has been discussed yet, but I watched Scott's Bass Lessons' video on the Anagram last night, just a video of the podcast with Ian and Scott discussing it. Near the end of the video Ian mentions that eventually the unit will be capable hopefully of doing models of pedals on its own without the use of a computer or tablet or seperate database......basically you would plug in the pedal to the effects loop and it runs a signal through the pedal capturing it. Now that will be impressive if that's something that they incorporate. I didn't know that that was in the future plans until yesterday.

Oh man, if they could make it THAT easy !!! I like the idea of capturing my SWR amp, but don't know if I can do it justice by recording. How cool would it be to just plug the XLR out into the Anagram and get your neural model like that! That would accelerate my trigger-pulling in a big way.
[Edit] In thinking about it, I'm not sure that would even be possible, with the re-amping of a standard WAV file, if I have understood correctly. Maybe there's some voodoo magic that could be done.

 

[Barghest]

So yesterday at rehearsal I tried running the Anagram via 4-cable method with my MT500v2 and it was really something. Gives me the flexibility to get in there and adjust amp parameters on the fly instead of having to bend over like a fool each time. And the great thing is now I can do the same with my beloved Ashdown ABM 600 head - incorporate that goodness right wherever I want in the signal chain.

Wonderful setup in general, but the problem now is how do I use an expression pedal? Basically I want to use a volume pedal (I do a lot of swells and what have you in our shows - at rehearsal I was doing them with the volume knob on my bass and it wasn't great) but since the expression pedal input is one of the FX loop inputs, how do I fit it in? I know you can use a splitter cable on the Send, but that's not going to be feasible to use on stage with a head....

Any ideas from the hive mind?

Realistically, a long insert cable is pretty much your only option for doing it. If you know how to solder, it's easy to do, and if you don't you can contact someone who makes cables and they'll get it sorted for you. Basically just use some stereo cable, or some figure 8 cable, then just have it split out to two mono jacks right at the head so you're not trailing two extra cables across the whole stage. If you're running cables to the head anyway, you can make yourself a loom which is what I've done for my board (I do a bi-amp rig rather than 4 cable method, but same result in terms of looming cables together).

Either you can have a loom made from somewhere like BTPA, or you can do it yourself with regular cables and Techflex. Feel free to message me if you want to discuss the details of it.

 

[chiphaleonbass]

Anagram into tube preamp = fun
View attachment 7238847

Got to thinking about this a bit... putting this in the effects loop you could still use the DI out; have a bunch of pre "amp modeling" effects going to the DI and then utilize the tube saturation before the amp models and out of the DI's built into the Anagram.. might have to try this. I also can't find a compressor to compete with my Cali76, so far using the listed attack and release times of the Cali with the Compressor/Limiter has given me the best results, how about you Ivan?