All Activity

Or, the variation on that quote, "I wish I had spent more time at work"

It’s really easy. Took me less than 5 mins to do mine. i have drive on and off, modulation on and off, patch up and patch down. The only reason i change patches is because you can only have one type of modulation in a patch. Sometimes i want chorus, sometimes phaser. its a well thought out system. You just assign a pair of midi numbers to each foot switch. Maybe I’m missing something but I’ve had to assign a number to turn it on, and a number to turn it off for each foot switch. Easy enough to do. You can also set each switch to turn multiple blocks on and off. I have the eq block also come on when i use modulation, with a bit of low end reduction and overall level down slightly. the good thing is, becuse you are using midi CC numbers these wok across all the patches, so you you don’t have to set each one up. In fact i let my guitarist (who has just got a GP-5) use my chocolate at the last rehearsal and nothing needed adjusting for it to work. If the chocolate is powered (USB phone charger is fine), it will also power the GP-5 which is also cool.

Sorry, yes, I was talking of recording - one channel is M and one is S. They are then decoded for convential L/R playback - if done on a desk or patchbay as you mentioned, the S signal is panned left, and is then duplicated, phase inverted, and panned right, then both are combined with the M signal. But almost all DAWs and a lot of hardware recorders and monitoring utilities now have the matrix built in, or offer it as a plugin, which is quicker and takes one track instead of three! When auditioning L/R material through and M/S matrix (ie soloing the M or S elements) you're right, M=L+R and S=L-R., and boosting the S component will make things wider.

You misunderstand... M is the sum of the 2 stereo tracks, call them tracks 1&2, or A&B, or X&Y, and S is the difference between the 2. When I worked in BBC sound we didn't have a plug-in to do the coding or decoding for us, we'd do it via a jackfield with parallel blocks and a phase reverse lead... If you've recorded in M&S, then one of the tracks is the mid signal, and the other is side.

Sold Paddy my Squier CV Mustang bass. A pleasure to deal with, great communication along the way. We met in a McDonald's car park to make the exchange and it was rude not to grab a bite to eat after 😁 Wishing you all the best with getting back on the horse @paddy109

@Paulhauser

My moto is life is a book, and nobody wants to waste time reading a boring book so fill your book with amazing adventures, experiences and achievements. It doesn't matter how big that book is, but like all books it needs a start and will always have an ending so make the bit in the middle amazing. As SumOne above says, nobody is ever going to say, 'I wish I watched more daytime telly alone'. 🤣

Sure, it would look better with a matching headstock, but it's much nicer than this monstrosity.

How did you get on programming the MIDI switcher?

For the benefit of people with the G string problem on the 5-string bass. After several discussions with the guitar shop owner (trying to understand why there was this issue), we solved it easily. First of all, this issue affects only the 5 string. And only the p-pickup. The 5-string has an odd number of strings, so the split pickup should take care of the first 2 strings with one side of the pickup and 3 strings with the other side. The reason why the G string has a lower volume is because it has been switched with the p pickups, so the side with two strings to take care of has 3 poles and the side with 3 strings has only 2 (resulting in the G string without a proper pole associated). To solve it, simply switch the p bass pickups, and you will be fine. You’re welcome.

A few things are incorrect here - with M/S recording, M is not track 1 + 2. M is simply track 1 and S is simply track 2. When they are decoded (easily done with a simple plugin, or you can do it manually), they then give an L/R output (instead of M/S). When decoded, L=M+S and R=M-S, and as you state, the difference gives the stereo information. When summed backed to mono, the S signal is completely discarded, giving strong mono compatibility from the (hopefully) well-placed M mic. With 'ordinary stereo', it's not always a crossed pair of mics. There are two fundamental approaches: *Co-incident stereo arrays (which is a crossed pair of mics, as close as possible to being in the same point in space) - these rely on the microphone polar patterns to achieve level difference between the same sound hitting both mics. So a sound coming from the left (for example), hits both mics at the same time (because they're in the same point in space), but the left mic will be facing the sound, and therefore picks it up stronger, and so when played back, the sound will appear to be coming from the left. For this reason, omnidirectional mics don't work in a co-incident pair because they're equally sensitive all round although in practice, you'd probably get some sense of width at higher frequencies unless you managed to get hold of a perfectly matched pair of perfectly omnidirectional mics... which I don't think exist!) There are many variations of co-incident stereo, using different polar patterns and mutual angles. Figure-8 mics at 90 degrees are the classic 'Blumlein pair', which gives great results in a good acoustic, but needs to placed quite far because the stereo recording angle is quite narrow (which exaggerates the width if placed close). Cardioid mic at 90 degrees is also seen often, but are often unsuitable and quite useless because the recording angle is so wide, it gives a narrow image where everything in front of you is bunched up around the middle. It can be useful to record ambience all around you, or when you have to really close to the source. Co-incident arrays usually gives a very pinpoint placement of sources, but can sometimes lack spaciousness. *Spaced arrays - In a spaced array, the mics are spaced apart (by anything from a few CM to a meter or two), and are therefore not at the same point in space. Because of this, they depend on [i]time of arrival[/i] differences to create a stereo image instead of level differences. Put simply, when the mics are spaced, a sound coming from the left will hit the left microphone before reaching the right microphone. Again, there are many variations using different polar patterns and spacings for a different recording angle, with spaced omnis probably being the most useful, and cardioids again being quite limited in their usefulness. Spaced arrays usually sound more spacious, but more vague in their imaging. A lot of the most popular stereo techniques (at least in classical music), combine the two methods. Common techniques such as ORTF rely on a mutual angle for level difference (like a co-incident pair) combined with a slight spacing between the mics for time-of-arrival differences (like a spaced pair). In the case of ORTF, it's a mutual angle of 110 degrees between mics, and spaced 17cm apart. All this is quite irrelevant to bass playing though... these 'proper' stereo techniques are about giving a fairly natural representation of an acoustic soundstage. They are treated as 'one system', not 'twi mics'. There are plenty of other ways to get stereo 'results' without taking the above approaches (drum overheads, for example, are rarely a 'proper' stereo technique, but the results are still fine), and of course it's quite common on acoustic instruments to use two mono mics panned apart (by this I mean two mics placed intentionally to pick up a different sound - e.g one by the bridge and one nearer the neck. It's not a true stereo array, but can give nice results in stereo.) but stereo feeds for your IEM can be very enjoyable as you can move sources around to match where they are on stage, or wherever you'd like. It doesn't matter if the sources are mono - they can still be moved around the stereo field. Your own bass will be mono of course unless you use stereo effect. And now I'm realising that I'm responding to something posted in January...!!!

Hi all, Having a play with a yamaha 734a this week. This has been on my wanted list for probably 10 years, or at least since they came out. Very distinctive look and cool. We'll, after 2 days I can say I love it. Granted it took quite a few hours to get used to. There is SO much tone control it's unreal. The passive p tone is absolutely perfect, yet the passive tone control (the treble knob when in passive) helps you dial it to perfection. Flick it to active and you've a whole lot more tone to dial with. Turn it to rear pickup and it's lovely and growly. Thinner and tighter. Put again either the tone control or active eq allow you to move to your taste. Personally I start at either end of the pickup selector, dial in a nice sound then move the pickup blend to either make it warmer and fatter or thinner and tighter. Works a treat. The bass is nice and light. It also has a lovely shallow neck. Both making it easy to play. This one has emg pickups, did they come as standard?

Result! Glad you got it sorted. Neither pickup is really to blame - if they're out of phase with each other, then it doesn't matter which one you reverse.

TV Dinners - ZZ Top

57 Channels (And Nothin' On) - Bruce Springsteen

Throw Away Your Television - RHCP again.