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Roland VB-99

#21
My VB-99 from Sweetwater arrived last friday, here's some first impressions.....

WAAAAAY Overpriced. I'm must be old-school....something over $1k should be made of metal.

Tracking is better than the old V-Bass, so hopefully roland is spending some of that mark-up on good programmers.Even my GK-2b equipped banger tracks noticeably better

The upright sounds are better than the V-Bass, but still not nearly authentic enough for unaccompanied playing.

Synth sounds are excellent and there are more of them than the old unit.

Bass Models are excellent

The guitar models are many, and a mixed bag. I like the clean tones, but the distortion patches are too compressed (Tom Scholz playing through an AM radio in a 77 Buick comes to mind) I get better "guitar" by plugging the bass into my Oberheim GM-400.

I can't seem to find my favorite V-Bass patch "slostrings", (a Beatlesque backwards guitar sound) but with the VB-99's polyphonic slo-gear effect I should be able to program my own.

The ribbon is pretty useless, but the D-Beam is fun

The interface is a big improvement.....The V-Bass had only the data wheel, which eventually gets funky, this puppy has half a dozen parameter knobs and more dedicated switches. I'll be programming this more than I did the V-Bass

Haven't checked the Bass-to-MIDI yet, but I'll probaly keep the GI-20, as it seems the VB-99 has fewer tweakable parameters....we'll see

All in all, I'll be keeping it, but having done bass-to-MIDI and polyphonic string processing for many years, I'm still more excited about Keith McMillans impending Stringport than by Rolands latest plastic wonder
 
#22
I was skimming through the manual some more. I like to use some compression but not the standard compress everything compression. The VB-99 has separate compression for each string and it also models several multiband compressors. Amazing.
If you were to add up all the value, hardware wise, and software wise the VB-99 is actually quite a value.

The stringport looks interesting, but if you don't have all the extra SW/plugins that vb-99 has, it's going to start to get expensive.

The ribbon controller would nice if I could mount it on my bass. Like by thumb so I could run my thumb on it to control a resonate filter while playing with my fingers. The D-bean looks handy, I've seen demos where guitarist wave their headstock over it to change things, or hold a chord.

I'd like to see a hybrid VB/VG - 99 where one dsp is setup to be used for bass, the other for guitar. Probably not much of a market.

Maybe I'll breakdown soon and get one.
 
#23
It's very interesting to have the ability to put more or less compression on different strings , depending on your technique. Slap or else.
The multi band compression is strange , you have 3 crossover frequencies for 3 bands but have control over low and high only....... strange......
In fact , it's an interesting concept to be able to apply different stuff to different strings!
I was listening to "The power to believe" from King Crimson (they use VG a lot) and realized that you could pan different strings to give the auditor the impression of different parts played simultaniously.
I'm sure the guys did different takes in the studio , but probably use this feature "live".

I agree with Punkjazzer , the upright sounds are not up to par to play solo , but in a "live" band situation , it's good enough.

Guitar sounds are limited to Strat and LesPaul , but are OK to do dual Bass & Guitar parts with both processor.
There are a couple of patches wich is one guitar and one bass simultanious.

The initial setup does change alot the overall sound of the unit.
I intially make a "graphtech" setup , but if I put the piezo to "Piezo" and not "graphtech" , I prefer that sound.:hmm: We'll see , still have to experiment.......
 
#24
I understand the upright sounds aren't great, but are you simply using the unit's default patches? Could they be improved with a certain amount of tweaking? I play guitar as well, and I bought a Roland GT Pro processor a while ago. The acoustic sounds in it s*cked, IMO, until I went on some chat forums and some guys posted their own acoustic program patches. By playing around with various parameters (i.e. resonators, simulations, chorsu/reverbs) I now I get incredible acoustic guitar simulations.

Another question: does the VB99 come with looping? I believe the GT10 and VG99 do.
 
#25
The uprirght sounds are not BAD , the right expression would be; they are not amazing. Tweeked , they are good enough if played in a band situation , they are just not "perfect" to play in a solo situation.
I wouldn't do a solo intro of a song with an upright bass patch , but I would play a song with that sound no problem.
Now that I have my fretless retrofitted with a Graphteck GK kit , they are even better , but it's still not the same sound as my real upright bass.... but anyways there is always the problem of "electrifing" an upright bass , to find the right pickup , the right sound , that's something of another debate.
Let's also say that the upright patch sounds better than any bad sounding "real" upright. ;)

Like we could argue on the COSM bass simulations, but for me , for Live purpose , that's pretty it. Close enough for Rock'n'roll :smug:
Of course a real SVT and a real Precision '57 will sound closer to the original (doh!) but the flexibility and sound possibilities I have with this thing , and 200lbs lighter , anytime, no contest...... smaller than an upright bass too!

And I don't agree with Punkjazzer about the price.
All the stuff this thing does , all the stuff it replaces , it's worth every penny.

Yes there is a 10 second looper. It's called "hold"
 
#26
If you go to the Roland site, and click on the interactive tour there are some sound samples of the factory defaults.

Listening to the "upright" sound check it doesn't sound too bad to me. Maybe the notes are way to even? Could be some tweaking of the resonance would help. Or playing technique. Maybe it could be better if they had an option to load an impulse response for cabinets and bass bodies. (A future rev maybe)

I'm not always looking for sounds of the past, but what new incredible sounds can be created. I'm really looking forward to see what tweaks and patches people come up with.
 
#28
Out of curiosity , I just did a comparative test between my GI-20 and the VB-99's pitch to MIDI abilities.

They both have the same latency , but you can have a little more control over different parameter with the GI-20.
Play feel , DATA sent , S1/S2 assignations, etc.....
The GI20 is designed only for that purpose. It is more "complete"

It works very nicely with guitar , but for bass , in the lower register , it's unplayable. Latency , glitches :spit:

That's why the VB99's COSM is magic !
 
#29
Latency aside ,has anyone been able to get the Bass-to-MIDI in the VB-99 to respond to softly played notes with anything approaching the sensitivity to dynamics found in the GI-20 , GR-20 or any other MIDI converters ? So far I can still only get the VB-99 Bass-to-MIDI to consistently respond to notes played very aggressively .

Thanks .
 
#32
fokof said:
Out of curiosity , I just did a comparative test between my GI-20 and the VB-99's pitch to MIDI abilities.

They both have the same latency , but you can have a little more control over different parameter with the GI-20.
Play feel , DATA sent , S1/S2 assignations, etc.....
The GI20 is designed only for that purpose. It is more "complete"

It works very nicely with guitar , but for bass , in the lower register , it's unplayable. Latency , glitches :spit:

That's why the VB99's COSM is magic !
Click to expand...

Hmm. That's what I was afraid of. As I suggested earlier, a good workaround option to improve the tracking/latency would be to string your bass with piccolo strings and tune down your patches an octave. I'm doing this now with my GR-33 and feeding the signal via midi out to my laptop running Reason, and I'm getting excellent tracking. Of course, the feel of lighter strings under your fingers takes some getting used to, but it didn't take long to adapt.
 
#33
pjmuck said:
Hmm. That's what I was afraid of. As I suggested earlier, a good workaround option to improve the tracking/latency would be to string your bass with piccolo strings and tune down your patches an octave. I'm doing this now with my GR-33 and feeding the signal via midi out to my laptop running Reason, and I'm getting excellent tracking. Of course, the feel of lighter strings under your fingers takes some getting used to, but it didn't take long to adapt.
Click to expand...
That was also my findings.
With the type of gigs I get , I could not go the Piccolo way. It's frustrating to see that it works so well for guitar but is so Sh***y for bass. John McLaughlin uses a GI20 , and at the speed he's playing , he sure needs good tracking. Invalid Link Removed

That's the main reason I went for the VB99 , the tracking is so good.
You don't have the sound flexibility of a CPU but eh...
 
#34
Actually I have a GI-20 too and I wouldn't mind if the latency on the VB-99 was similar to that unit but imho it would be nearly impossible to accurately judge the latency / tracking on the VB-99 without first having some way to further adjust the gain (or sensitivty) going into the Bass-to-MIDI section of the VB-99 .
 
#36
Thank you for your suggestions . I may eventually do just that . Although , I am already maxed out on the amount of gear I can carry to gigs on the train so for now I am still holding out for a firmware update from Roland . If / when they start returning my phone calls I will try to post here any info that I come across .
 
#40
Here is live clip with me playing lead bass on a jam using the VB-99 . The other bassist is playing a fretless 5 through the non-GK input of an old original model V-Bass . It is very rough ( you have been warned ) but I guess I need to start getting in the habit of posting stuff up .



Peace .
 

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