New MXR bass synth pedal released

[Sharkfinger]

8 minutes ago, Greg Edwards69 said:

If you think about it, the MXR is effectively a combination of pedals as well, stuffed into a single pedal. The presets are effectively like snapshots on the helix.

That's 100% what I want.  Like someone else here said, if it nails the sounds we love (don't care how it's achieved frankly), the ease of use of a single stomp, and has the accurate tracking and low latency... Well, that's the holy grail right? It will almost certainly outsell every other synth pedal released recently, combined.

 

[GisserD]

14 minutes ago, Sharkfinger said:

That's 100% what I want.  Like someone else here said, if it nails the sounds we love (don't care how it's achieved frankly), the ease of use of a single stomp, and has the accurate tracking and low latency... Well, that's the holy grail right? It will almost certainly outsell every other synth pedal released recently, combined.

 

Future impact V4 already acheives this i hear. But i think the reason it hasnt taken off is that its too complicated. I beleive a more cut down version of the FI (in a small modern enclosure) would have sold much better. Think about it, theres nothing the MXR can do that the FI cant.....

[Quatschmacher]

3 minutes ago, GisserD said:

Future impact V4 already acheives this i hear. But i think the reason it hasnt taken off is that its too complicated. I beleive a more cut down version of the FI (in a small modern enclosure) would have sold much better. Think about it, theres nothing the MXR can do that the FI cant.....

Partly lack of marketing, partly not loading it with cover band patches. Even if not using the editor, with a few properly tailored presets, the V4’s onboard controls would give you way more control than the MXR (apart from the lack of a compressor) and without recourse to hidden secondary functions. 

[Quatschmacher]

1 hour ago, Sharkfinger said:

This is why I'm so baffled that a 20+ year old pedal like the Bass Synth Wah can nail the tracking so well.

I am not familiar with this pedal. I wonder if it’s using a similar principle to the Boss SY-1 which doesn’t actually do any pitch conversion, rather it overlays/processes the incoming audio with additional spectral information to give the impression of a synth; there there is no tracking latency as it’s not tracking pitch at all. 

[Woodinblack]

1 hour ago, Sharkfinger said:

This is why I'm so baffled that a 20+ year old pedal like the Bass Synth Wah can nail the tracking so well.  Such a shame I don't like the synth sounds, I don't find them in the least usable.  Can't say I'm crazy about the octave tone either but it was a small price to pay for the tracking accuracy a

 

Because it isn't tracking at all, it is putting a wah on the signal then doing a sort of bitcrush distortion thing to make the 'synth like' effect.

 

The easiest way to track a signal is to not try!

[Al Krow]

56 minutes ago, Quatschmacher said:

Partly lack of marketing, partly not loading it with cover band patches. Even if not using the editor, with a few properly tailored presets, the V4’s onboard controls would give you way more control than the MXR (apart from the lack of a compressor) and without recourse to hidden secondary functions. 

 

The other obvious advantages of the FI over the MXR:

- input gain

- 99 presets, in banks of 10 (sure, I get that is overkill for many)

- two stomp switches

- display

 

The FI v4 VIP has a pedal-board friendly format not too far off what the MXR delivers

 

My tuppence worth, if I may, if Andreas wants to stay in the game with the advent of the MXR

 

Two obvious improvements to suggest:

- improved display. Boss stole a lead on this some while ago - please check their 200 series => can label patches with words and not just numbers. "Chaka Khan" is so much easier to remember than "#06"!

- load patches 1 - 10 with popular cover band patches

 

Marketing:

Why aren't there any decent YT clips of bass-players using the FI v4 VIP live in a band in the way that Paddy has just posted?

[Quatschmacher]

29 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

Two obvious improvements to suggest:

- improved display. Boss stole a lead on this some while ago - please check their 200 series => can label patches with words and not just numbers. "Chaka Khan" is so much easier to remember than "#06"!

In theory this ought to be possible as the patch files contain a 32-character name already. 

 

30 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

load patches 1 - 10 with popular cover band patches

That could easily be done in the next update. (Even before as it’s just a question of assembling them and uploading the bank file to the cloud.)

 

32 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

Why aren't there any decent YT clips of bass-players using the FI v4 VIP live in a band in the way that Paddy has just posted?

I presume rhetorical. Mainly because no one has bothered to do any. I did get Panda to send Gaz Williams a unit with the express outcome that he’d record a video but a year on he’s still not got around to it!

 

I’ve just revived an old idea of mine for being able to move patches around on the pedal without recourse to the editor as I’ve finally had the headspace to flesh out a nice UI for it. Let’s see if it’s possible as regards the actual coding. 

[LawrenceH]

OK I am breaking a self-imposed decade-long exile from posting to chime in here, because I just got the Future Impact VIP that was up for sale and I'm so bloody impressed with it as a product. You guys are absolutely right - in fact, I'd said something eerily similar to Peter earlier today in a private chat where he was very kindly giving me advice on a usb-midi converter.

 

First up - tracking on the VIP is stellar. I don't have the MXR, but I own the Source C4 and used to own the original Deep Impact. This feels both immediate and accurate, it gives me that finger-ear connection that makes me believe I'm playing an instrument. Feed it clean bass with clean technique and octaves jumps, slides, ghost notes, bends are no problem. The only thing that might improve it a little bit is some kind of training mode with AI or similar to give even better, context-dependent note-on/-off triggering. But it's already really, really good. If you're competent enough to play in a funky covers band then this pedal will do what you want with minimal adaptation to your playing style, you can play it and still feel like a bassist.

 

Sonically, I only needed to play through a few presets to hear very clearly that this will do anything that is showcased on that MXR demo, and more besides; including stuff the MXR can't do to the best of my knowledge but stuff that's still useful for actual real-world bassists. E.g. some of those classic bass monosynth patches a la MJ or Herbie rely on mixed waveform voices and/or pulse width modulation. The MXR 'voice' button is a bit of a black box that sort of kind of maybe covers these a bit but definitely not to the extent the FIV4 does. The FIv4 filters and associated envelopes sound great in a way the C4 can't manage; the sweeps are smooth, the tone is fat and pristine in a good way, that'll dirty up nicely if desired. In particular the very starts of the notes are the first time I've been convinced by a bass synth.

 

Ergonomically, the VIP makes this much pedalboard friendly and the metal finish looks good, better in real life than on-screen. In an ideal world a future hardware revision would include LCD screen, USB interface and either rotation of the VIP casing 90 degrees while retaining top cable entry, or an additional footswitch for separating patch up/down functions. At the moment fast-pressing moves you down a patch number instead of up, it is ok when you get used to it.

 

As Al has said above: The big but very solvable problem is that the v4/VIP presets showcase the power and quality of the pedal but by and large aren't at all useful for the average gigging bassist in a band. All it needs is slots 1-10, or better 1-20, to be filled with a range of presets chosen to mimic synth bass in classic tracks a la the MXR, and it would elevate it to the undisputed top of the pile. It wouldn't matter how easy it is to edit beyond the basic level and dynamics controls on the front, because the users that feared the editor would never need to touch it. That'd probably also help with the dearth of decent Youtube demos, since bass reviewers wouldn't have to gain programming expertise first. I think part of the issue for the FI is that the people developing it are way more adventurous and forward-looking than us bassists! As it is, for now we just have to accept getting our editing fingers dirty or at least downloading some of QM's excellent patches. Hence my question to him about an appropriate MIDI adaptor. A secondary problem is that a lot of the useful online info about the FIv4 is buried in gigantic megathreads here and at the Other Place, that are hard to search or browse efficiently.

 

Honestly I love the MXR demo and am still keen to try one, but I think once the hype has died down the FIv4 will emerge as still being current best-in-class for synth bass. It's not just powerful, it's musical and fun. Right I'll climb off my soap box now!

 

Be interested to hear people's takes on which classic synth bass tracks would make the cut for a preset top ten or top twenty...

 

 

[Quatschmacher]

16 minutes ago, LawrenceH said:

The only thing that might improve it a little bit is some kind of training mode with AI or similar to give even better, context-dependent note-on/-off triggering.

Funny you should say that; I’d made a similar suggestion during FI v4 development. One of the next things in the pipeline is a neural-net trained tracking system which will improve things further (using real-world playing clips). During testing, we got a taste of how fast this could be but it was causing crashes. Once those wrinkles have been ironed out, it’ll be fantastic.

 

@LawrenceH please duplicate your post in the big FI thread. 

Edited 5 hours ago by Quatschmacher

[LawrenceH]

Done. And there's me posting in the very megathread I was grumbling about being hard to mine for info! 🙃

[Quatschmacher]

It’s inevitable to look for comparisons. Here’s the FI v3 doing a classic Greg Philingaines part and coping pretty well:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dt5u-xJGXNTmXBKSkYH7fSTBPm5vTlgV/view?usp=drivesdk

 

Here’s the isolated part:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EBujKhsBj4awZp1YbbgglrSPeljJ_R2H/view?usp=drivesdk

Edited 4 hours ago by Quatschmacher