Digital Bass Guitar

You could get a MIDI pickup, slap it on a bass guitar body and neck, and you'd be there except for the signal processing, which you can get from Roland and other sources. Check out Graph Tech's offerings as well. Cheers!

 

Never tried one, but in Australia we have these midi basses by a company called Industrial Radio:

http://www.industrialradio.com.au/midi-bass/midi-bass.php

 

Neato.

 

I believe Graphtech has what youre looking for.

 

There was a Peavey MIDI bass on eBay a few days ago for pretty cheap. I'm not sure if it's still there or not.

 

There are bass options. I also reccomend just playing keyboard, which I don't think is a bad skill to have at any point in your musical life.

 

While MIDI information is indeed 1's and 0's, it's not audio. It's performance data - I played this note, this hard, held it for this long, and applied this pitch modification (bend, vibrato) - which then has to be used to trigger audio, typically from a synth. It can't translate a whole lot of the nuance of your playing, however, since it won't know the difference between a slapped note and a fingered note of equal volume, for example. You also typically have to deal with latency, or the delay in time between when you sound the note and when the system can recognize and translate the performance data. Since that latency is frequency dependent, you'll get more latency with bass than guitar, and more latency the lower the note you're playing.

If you want to output digital audio, you would still need some sort of transducer (like a magnetic or piezo pickup) which would translate the physical energy of the string into electrical energy, and then an A/D converter to convert the (analog) electrical signal into 1's and 0's. You would then have to plug that into something that accepts a digital output.

What are you trying to accomplish? If you want to plug directly into a computer, I know there are systems for guitars that output the signal digitally on a USB cable, and you might be able to find something like that for bass, but even then, I'm not sure what good that does for you over an external converter other than convenience. If you're trying to plug into something else, it might be easier to do it another way.

 

When you say digital, do you mean digital audio - take the normal analogue output of your bass and round it through an AD converter or MIDI which is performance data only (think of it as the punched paper roll in a player piano)?

What do you want to do with the digital output? That will help us make some recommendations.

 

AFAIK, except for "wired-fret" midi basses, every bass signal starts out as an analog signal, which can then be converted to digital. Most non-wired-fret midi PU's start with analog transducers (like piezos). Even LightWave "optical" PU's are analog transducers. The Variax just digitally processes an analog signal as well.

If there are "digital" PU's out there - i.e. ones that digitally sample the strings (or vibrations) directly, I'm not aware of them, though I'm pretty sure it would be technically possible to do that.

If you just want a digital audio signal (vs. midi), where you put the analog to digital converter (ADC) is the only question here. I don't see any real advantage to putting it inside the bass vs. outside the bass, but YMMV...

 

Behringer made a usb guitar is that what you're after?



Kinda cool tuitorial on making your own usb guitar
http://machrone.net/usbguitar/

 

and of course. obviously

 

Even on the wired-fret MIDI basses, only the MIDI note number information (basic pitch) is directly digitally derived. All the other information such as note on/off, velocity and pitch modulation (string bends/vibrato) are produced from the analogue signal.

 

Maybe a lightwave type of thing?

 

Not a bass, but all this talk reminds me of the synth-axe midi controller.

plucking strings and fretting strings were NOT CONNECTED. 100% midi data.

http://www.hollis.co.uk/john/synthaxe.html

 

Roland made some digital guitars back in 1980.
http://www.joness.com/gr300/GR-33B.htm

 

Roland G-77. I've always wanted one...

 

It's amusing to me that some people are trying to make the distinction between binary (1's and 0's) digital and analog. Here's how electricity works--electron, no electron, electron, electron, no electron, etc. Electricity is inherently binary, whether it's generated by an electromagnet sensing the vibration of a metal string over a polepiece or a crystal being vibrated, as in a piezo pickup.

To the OP, I really think getting an inexpensive bass that you like the feel of, like an SX or something, and retro-fitting it with a piezo style pickup (Graphtech, Fishman, etc. or getting a piezo equipped ABG and running it through something like the Roland VBass, is the way to go. Good luck.

 

Technically, the LightWave PU is an analog transducer. From their "Technology" page:

"The optical pickup is a proprietary type of transducer which utilizes an infrared emitter and an array of photodetectors for each string. The emitter casts a shadow of the string onto the photodetectors. As the string vibrates, the size and shape of the shadow changes accordingly and modulates a current which passes through the photodetectors. This current is the basis of an analog electrical signal which represents an accurate depiction of the vibrating string."

It is different though.