phagor

I've tried tuning in 5ths, and had similar experiences - anything scalic is too much of a stretch, but it was definitely interesting for 'thinking outside the box'. As for scale length, it's worth mentioning that several double bass players have played exclusively in 5ths, including Red Mitchell and Joel Quarrington. Double bass scale length is around 42". I think the technique is based around 'pivoting' around the left-hand thumb, instead of being locked into a one-finger-per-fret pattern.

Step this way... [url="http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=44555&st=80"]Mark Bass effects[/url] And this way... [url="http://www.talkbass.com/forum/showthread.php?t=549766&page=9"]MarkBass Super Synth[/url]

[quote name='P-T-P' post='726358' date='Jan 27 2010, 03:16 PM']Anyone know if they come with a power supply?[/quote] My Super Synth came with a power supply. The supply has a 'figure of 8' connector on the mains side, with a clip-on adapter for UK mains sockets. Looks a bit flimsy, but seems to work ok. The pedal is very thirsty - 550 mA. I think I'll be keeping it on its own power supply on my pedal board.

Thanks squire. I didn't want to post the clips here and step on lapolpora's toes, as he said he was gonna do some... but maybe he's been busy, probably got better things to do than make silly noises! But here's what I've done: Finally got round to making some clips. In the first clip I run through the presets one by one. [url="http://soundclick.com/share?songid=8510304"]Markbass Super Synth Presets Demo[/url] Bear in mind that these are the unedited presets - I would probably tweak each one to suit the song or my playing style, especially the dynamics. Demos 1 - 9 are synth presets 1 - 9 Demos 10 - 12 are octaver presets 1 - 3 Apologies to all the fine musicians whose songs I've butchered Next are some random bits and pieces. [url="http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_songInfo.cfm?bandID=1021221&songID=8510303"]Markbass Super Synth Stuff[/url] Demo one is a C major scale running down from C 3rd fret on the A string to C 1st fret on the B string, and using the open A and E strings. Next is the bare sound of one oscillator, filter wide open, no resonance, no envelope, no dynamics. C 3rd fret on A string. Third is all three oscillators, no detune. Fourth demo is all three oscillators, this time with osc 2 + 3 detuned - nice and phat! Demo five is a simple envelope controlling the filter, moderate attack and release. Demo six is a big ol' filter sweep - no attack, max release. Watch your speaker level for this Seven is me attempting to demonstrate how the tracking briefly plays the previous pitch. I play a high C (17th fret G string) then a low one (1st fret B string). On the low note you may briefly hear a blip at the beginning as the effect plays the higher note, then changes to the lower one a fraction of a second later. It's pretty quick - I repeat those notes again. Then the same again with the low note as C 3rd fret A string, then C 5th fret G string. It's not really noticeable on the higher notes. Finally I swap the original low and high notes. Again, the effect is not noticeable as the pedal can figure out the pitch of a high note much quicker than a low note. Next I solo the octaver tones. First note is my dry bass sound, C (3rd on the A again). Next is the Octave +1 tone on its own. Then the Octave -1, and finally the Octave -2. Next segment is all three octave tones at equal volume. Note that like the synth, you can't totally eliminate the dry bass sound! Last demo is the same with the dry bass mixed back in. I hope that gives you an idea what this pedal can do. If you have anything specific you want to hear, let me know. I'm not going to have much chance to play over the Christmas period, but I'll see what I can do.

I've had one for a couple of days, thanks to mark_random for great service. I agree with the points lapolpora made - this is a really fun pedal that responds well to your playing and sounds very fat and analog-y. Here's a long braindump about it (just posted this [url="http://www.talkbass.com/forum/showthread.php?t=549766&page=9"]over on Talkbass[/url] too). My Markbass Super Synth arrived the other day and I've spent a few hours with it, so I thought I'd give you my initial impressions. The short answer is: this thing sounds fantastic! Although it uses DSP, it sounds very analog. Think Minimoog, but with three oscillators. The sounds aren't hugely varied, but what it does, it does very well. First off, I don't have huge experience of other synth pedals. I own an (old style) EHX Bass Microsynth. I had a Boss ME8B. I've played an Akai Deep Impact. I've played lots of analog and digital synths. This sounds like a real synth, rather than a fuzzy processed version of your bass's sound like the BMS. It sounds fat, unlike the clips I've heard of the Octavius Squeezer, which only has one oscillator. Here's a quick tour: Slightly corny name. Very solid construction. Pretty big - not as big as the BMS, but close, and is taller. The four knobs are sunk into a groove so they can't get knocked while on the floor. The knobs themselves feel very solid and smooth. Three footswitches, also very solid. No option for battery power. Takes a standard 12v negative tip DC power supply. Mono input, mono or stereo outputs. USB socket for connecting to the Markbass Pedal Controller software. Markbass describe the bypass as true, and I can hear a relay clicking inside when it switches, so I believe them. It's very clean sounding in either bypass or effect mode. No noticeable hiss. The first knob is an input gain, with accompanying clip LED. It's nice to have this on the front panel, as I find it's key to getting predictable results when triggering synths or envelope effects. This doesn't get saved with the presets - it's global, which makes sense, as you might want to tweak it for different basses etc. Next knob is the filter Cutoff frequency, or the octave down level in octaver mode. Next is Tone - this is a set of 7 factory settings for the oscillators. Think of it as a shortcut to setting the various oscillator controls. There's also a User setting, which can be programmed using the Markbass Pedal Controller software. I panicked initially, thinking that there would be just one User setting for all the presets, but that's not the case - each preset can have its own User tone setting. This knob doubles as the octave up level in octaver mode. Finally there's the Level knob, which sets the overall output level of the synth. In octaver mode, it sets the level of your dry bass signal. The first footswitch advances through the presets. The second is the bypass switch. The third switches between synth and octaver modes. An LED lights when the pedal is not in bypass mode. There's a 6 character 7 segment LED display in the centre of the pedal which displays the preset number and either SNT or OCT for the synth or octaver modes. There are nine synth presets and three octave presets available, which seems a little stingy. I probably would never use that many presets on one gig, but it would be nice to maybe have a preset bank and a user bank. Any of the presets can be overwritten using the Pedal Controller software. The presets do a pretty good job of demonstrating the possibilities of the pedal, although I started replacing some of the more wacky ones straight away with meat and potato sounds. Tracking is very good. There is no noticeable delay between the start of your bass's note and the effect. This seems to be done by starting the oscillator at its previous pitch while the pedal works out the pitch of the new note. If you play a very high note followed by a very low note, this is just noticeable, as it takes the pedal maybe a tenth of a second to calculate the new pitch. You briefly hear the high pitch before it switches to the low note. The other way around you don't hear a jump, as the pedal can calculate the pitch of a high note very quickly. In practice, this jumping is not obvious, as notes in a bass line tend to be closer together, and the jump is often disguised by the 'squelch' of the filter opening. This sounds like a problem, but I think it's a really good solution - much better than hearing a delay before the synth sound starts. Octaver mode is simpler. Just the three controls already mentioned for Octave Down, Octave Up and Dry level. The octave down sound is nice, somewhere between the OC2 and EBS tones. Has a little bit of grit to it. The octave up sound is not what I expected - it sounds more like a synth than your bass's sound, maybe a sine or heavily filtered sawtooth and is very smooth and even sounding. I had to double check that it's an octave up from my bass's pitch but it is. It blends very nicely with the dry and octave down tones, but it's not very aggressive. That's it for controls on the unit itself. There's much more inside the box though. Download the Markbass Pedal Controller from the Markbass website, connect to the pedal via USB, and you get access to all the fun parameters. You can't power the pedal from USB - you need to have the DC adapter plugged in too. All the changes you make to the knobs on the screen affect the sound of the pedal immediately, so this is a great way to experiment. You can load and save patches to and from the pedal. You can also make complete preset files which contain the settings for all the presets, for backup or for different gigs etc. You can't apply these all in one go to the pedal though - you need to store each preset individually. In synth mode, the effect generates three oscillators based on the pitch from your bass. The three oscillators have the same waveform - a sawtooth, and each can have an interval (plus 31 semitones or minus 32, over two and half octaves each way) plus a detune value. You can set the level of each. You can also pan them between the stereo outputs if you want, or leave them centre for mono use. There's a portamento control - this glides from one note to the other when you play legato with no gaps between the notes. Very predictable in operation and adds more 'real synth' flavour to the sound. I felt like it softened the attack of the note a little bit, so I would probably turn it off unless I wanted to feature it prominently. The pedal tracks pitches very well. All the way down to low B on my five string! Very occasionally, the pedal jumps to a higher or lower octave than the note played. It doesn't flip back and forward like some older octave pedals I've played. The pedal seemed to hold the note well as the bass note decayed. It also seems to be less sensitive to open strings than, say my EBS Octabass, where open strings present problems for the tracking. It worked well with several basses, active and passes, fretted and fretless. Slapping, pick - all fine. Even worked great with the piezo pickup on my double bass! The oscillators are routed through a single filter. This has cutoff and resonance controls. The filter sounds good and can be quite aggressive. Unfortunately the filter can't be made to self-oscillate by turning the resonance all the way up. That's a shame, I wouldn't use it all the time, but it can be useful for special effects or even for faking another oscillator tone. There's a simple Attack and Release envelope filter that can affect the filter cutoff. Note that this is more like AD - Attack and Decay filter on a real synth, because the decay starts as soon as the attack has finished, not after the note has ended - like most bass synth effects, as soon as your bass note ends, the synth effect ends too. There's an Envelope parameter which specifies how much the envelope changes the filter. I think this gets 'added' to the Filter Dynamic parameter, with the result that the envelope effect sometimes get lost if you have the Filter Dynamic setting quite high. For a more obvious envelope effect, turn the Filter Dynamic down. There's also a Mix control, which controls the blend between your dry bass signal and the synth effect. There are several controls that affect how your playing dynamics affect the sound. For me, this is what makes this pedal great. It really responds to your playing, making it seem like a real instrument. Some people like the fact that the EHX Bass Microsynth is a fixed filter - it doesn't change the filter depending on how loud your notes are. I guess that leads to a more robotic, consistent sound, but it's not what I want. First of all, there are the Note On and Note Off level controls. These turn the synth on when your bass's signal level goes above the Note On level, and stops the synth when the level goes below the Note Off level. This is similar to the Trigger or Sensitivity control on other pedals, but having both allows the triggering to be customised more precisely. Set the Note On level too low, and the synth will trigger on all the little muted notes and fret noise that you play, which can sound messy. Set it too high, and the synth might not pick up every note you intend. The Note Off level would normally be quite low, so that the synth sustains to the end of your bass note. But for a really tight rhythmic sound, I found it cleaned up the synth note lengths to crank this up high. Next is Amp Dynamic and Filter Dynamic. These control how much of your playing dynamic affects the output level of the synth and the filter cutoff. Turn these all the way down and you get BMS - all notes are the same level and brightness. Turn them up and your playing controls the level and filter. Perfect. I've already found a couple of things that I don't like or would like to see changed. There's no way to route your dry bass sound through the filter. That means no envelope filter effects! Agggh! That would have been so obvious to do and could have replaced another pedal on my board along with the synth and octaver. Being cynical, maybe Markbass want to make a separate envelope filter pedal and therefore don't want to lose sales of that to this pedal. Please Markbass, add this as an update! The filter doesn't self-oscillate. Not a huge deal, but would be nice, maybe also some different filter types - 2 pole, 4 pole. The oscillators only do one waveform - a sawtooth. This is a pretty good choice, it's the most useful. But a square wave option would expand the palette of sounds further. While they're at it, oscillator sync, ring mod and FM would be nice additions and would allow the pedal to take on 80s 90s and 00s dance music bass sounds. There's no way to see what the factory Tone settings are for the oscillators. I could probably get close by tweaking and A/Bing, but I'm lazy ;-) Now a big one. The Mix control doesn't allow for just synth sound and no dry bass. Turn the Mix control all the way up - that maxes the synth. Then turn all the oscillator levels down so they are generating no sound. You should hear nothing, right? Wrong, there's no way to completely eliminate your dry bass signal from the effect. Now, I usually like some dry bass mixed in with my synth. It gives a little extra weight to the sound, and can get me out of trouble if the tracking fails or a long note ends suddenly on the synth. But you should be able to remove the bass sound completely if you want, surely? This would be easy to fix by Markbass, I'm sure. The Level control on the pedal itself is not so useful. It controls the overall level of the synth effect. I've already got loads of gain and volume controls in my signal chain. I'd rather have the Mix control on the front panel, so I can tweak how much dry bass is mixed with the synth. I really like the Pedal Controller software. But I'm a bit nervous that certain key parameters are only accessible through the software and can't be tweaked on a gig. The main ones are the Note On and Off levels and the Mix level. Everything else is on the front panel or I could live with, but these are key to getting a consistent, predictable performance out of the pedal. In an ideal world, my bass level and how hard I'm playing would always be the same, and I could set the pedal up accordingly. But that's not the real world ;-) Not sure I want to be carrying a laptop around with me at some of the gigs I do! Don't let these moans put you off trying this pedal. It's a big step up from anything I've heard or played before. I've already started looking sideways at my BMS and EBS Octabass thinking about whether I need them. If Markbass update the pedal and fix some of the above issues, I'll be very happy. Wow, what a long, waffly post! I've probably forgotten something - ask if you want to know anything about this pedal.

Thanks for the review Andy. I've fancied one of these for a while. How did you get hold of it? Did you import it from the states, or use the UK distributor? The walnut one looks fab on the Eastwood website ([url="http://www.eastwoodguitars.com/"]http://www.eastwoodguitars.com[/url]) - that would be my colour choice too.

I usually play this with fingers, but pop the high notes. Great tune, great bass player, would love to know who he/she is.

James Brown - Sex Machine is a good example. It's played back faster than it was recorded. I noticed when trying to figure out how Bootsy was playing what he played. Slow it down and the pitch also drops so you can use the open E string. Also, it's slower and very groovy, and James sounds like he does on other records. But speeded up it sounds tighter and has more energy, I can understand why they did it.

I bought a pedal from him a while back on Gumtree. A very smooth transaction, seemed like a straight up guy.

Aerodyne for sale in the marketplace: [url="http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=66649"]http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=66649[/url] Superband not included.

Spotify to the rescue! [url="http://open.spotify.com/album/6S6k7jxZEZBwUs0NRMFKoi"]http://open.spotify.com/album/6S6k7jxZEZBwUs0NRMFKoi[/url] OK, probably won't sound as good as your vinyl copy. But Danny's playing still sounds very tasty, good call Clarky.

Just seen some more models on Ebay. Seem to be from the same factory, and handled by the same Italian company, but listed on another website: [url="http://exlusiveguitars.com/"]exlusiveguitars.com[/url] Some interesting pickup options, PMM on the Fusion and a sort of triple-bucker MM on the SuperB.

The VT's output is buffered, so it should work well into your audio inferface's line in or instrument in. The output isn't balanced, so it won't work well into a mic input, and a long lead may pick up noise. A DI box would get around these problems. But I don't think a DI box will make much difference to sound quality, over using a short lead into the line in. Enjoy the VT, I love mine!

Interesting. If it's passive, it won't contain any transistors. My guess is it's basically a rectifier using diodes that flips the negative part of the bass signal up to the positive, so getting two humps in the waveform for the price of one. Since it doesn't do any tracking, it could work with polyphonic signals.

[quote name='hookys6stringbass' post='608599' date='Sep 25 2009, 01:16 PM']What's the best way to connect it seeing as it has no xlr out.... into a decent D.I. box to the p.a. or a bloody long lead with xlr on the end...?[/quote] The output is unbalanced, so a long lead will pick up noise. Maybe if it's a good quality shielded lead. Better to use a DI box.

[quote name='warwickhunt' post='581682' date='Aug 26 2009, 06:10 PM']Why not get a Sadowsky PJ? [/quote] I'd be very interested in a Sadowsky PJ. Guess I'm just curious about all the Fender-love that's been going around lately... that and the Fenders are a fair bit cheaper than another Sad

I agree with rjb - my Sadowsky Metro UV70 5 string is fairly polite sounding. That's why it's my main gigging bass - it suits pretty much every musical situation and always sounds consistent and smooth. I'd like to have a characterful growly vintage Fender, but not sure it would actually be as useful in a real musical situation. The pickup blend knob definitely works the wrong way round, but I've got used to it now. Also, moving it makes a huge difference in tone. On my other basses, I often whack the pickup knob all the way to the bridge pickup. On the Sadowsky, I only need to turn it a little off centre to get a burpy bridge or wooley neck pickup sound. Don't know if that's a 70's pickup placement thing or a Sadowsky thing... The active / VTC combination takes a little getting used to. It's easy to overdo it with the active treble and bass. I usually set them for a bright slap/pick sound, then use the VTC to take the top off for fingers. I am thinking about getting a Fender (after years of not liking any I've played). Possibly a 4 string PJ to complement the Sadowsky. Any opinions on the various artist PJs? Frank Bello, Tony Franklin fretted, Reggie Hamilton.

I like the EBS, it's smoother than the OC2, not as gritty. Tracking is a little better than the OC2. I have no experience of the Micro POG. On Youtube and clips I've heard, it sounds digital and not very pleasant to my ears. You should also check out the newish Dunlop MXR 288, which is supposed to have the best of both worlds - a knob for a gritty OC2 like tone and a knob for a cleaner EBS type tone. The tracking is supposed to be very good, better than the OC2 and EBS. Has a mid control which might suit your fretless well too. Check out this video: [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxQRMoMv_5s"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxQRMoMv_5s[/url]

Still loving my VT. I've used it with double bass to warm up the tone a little. Nice with fretless too. My favourite use for it at the moment is after my EHX Bass Micro Synth - it makes it sound filthy and huuge!

I recognise that distinctive spidery technique from watching him play back in the day. I remember seeing Mark at a gig not long before he left the UK, playing an old 50s precision or tele bass, with... 4 strings! Sounded great.

I think the new Will Lee model is the first Sadowsky with a Mid control. Sadowsky and other pre makers often say that a three band circuit never sounds as good as a two band. I'm not sure about that, but I don't miss a mid on my Sadowsky Metro. Even with my other basses with mid controls, I also have to tweak the mids on my amp. Unless the mid control on a bass is parametric or semiparametric, it's not going to do the job for me. But I don't want that many knobs on my bass!

Also check out the Electroharmonix Bass Micro Synth. It's a very analogue-y sounding pedal, with lots of sliders for tweaking. Basically has an octaver (plus a fuzzy distortion) and a filter section. Also has a slow attach slider for 'bowed' effects. Unlike the octave - fuzz - envelope filter pedal combination, the filter is not dependant on your dynamic level which kinda helps the synth-like effect. The new XO version is smaller and has true bypass. Might be all you need in one pedal, although I use mine with and without other pedals for different textures.