New MXR bass synth pedal released

[BigRedX]

@Al Krow but a bigger pedal board may not be an option. My Helix which is probably smaller than a lot of people's pedal boards is at the limit of what can be comfortably fitted on a lot a stages I play. Others have already stated that there is insufficient stage space for a keyboard synth. For them a bigger pedal board may well also be out of the question.

 

The tracking speed is worrying. Almost all the synth bass clips I have seen using processed bass guitar are slow to medium paced songs, or ones with a lot of space between the notes in the bass part. Most of what my band play is over 130bpm and the bass lines are mostly 1/8 notes or faster. That's going to be a problem. The other thing I have spotted is that if you are using synth sounds for rhythmic parts everyone will expect the timing to be absolutely spot on because these are usually handled by a sequencer of some sort. Your audience will be able to hear that something is wrong even if they can't pin point exactly what it is. For me the ideal solution which doesn't involve using a keyboard would be to put the bass through a MIDI triggered Filter and VCA device, but I only know of one and that's a relatively large rack-mount unit which is no longer being produced.

[mattpbass]

I'm not sure that the no space on stage argument holds up, I use a bass synth at every gig big or small, its stand goes above my pedal board so I don't require any more/less space either way. The set-up time and too much stuff to carry argument I can definitely get on board with though! 😅

[Al Krow]

29 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

@Al Krow but a bigger pedal board may not be an option. My Helix which is probably smaller than a lot of people's pedal boards is at the limit of what can be comfortably fitted on a lot a stages I play. Others have already stated that there is insufficient stage space for a keyboard synth. For them a bigger pedal board may well also be out of the question.

 

The tracking speed is worrying. Almost all the synth bass clips I have seen using processed bass guitar are slow to medium paced songs, or ones with a lot of space between the notes in the bass part. Most of what my band play is over 130bpm and the bass lines are mostly 1/8 notes or faster. That's going to be a problem. The other thing I have spotted is that if you are using synth sounds for rhythmic parts everyone will expect the timing to be absolutely spot on because these are usually handled by a sequencer of some sort. Your audience will be able to hear that something is wrong even if they can't pin point exactly what it is. For me the ideal solution which doesn't involve using a keyboard would be to put the bass through a MIDI triggered Filter and VCA device, but I only know of one and that's a relatively large rack-mount unit which is no longer being produced.

 

Hey BRX - fully appreciate you have a full Helix and adding an additional separate pedal(s) to that doesn't make sense for you.

 

But for pretty much everyone who is planning to get an MXR (or FI), they will either be upgrading an existing set up, shift something else off their pedal board to accommodate, or get a bigger pedal board. It's what many of us pedal users do very regularly, when the need arises.

 

I also completely also get your point re. synth pedal tracking - it's a fundamentally important issue for live use and has been picked up by several of us on this thread. Was precisely the reason for my choosing to go with the Boss SY-200 despite it not having as good synth sounds as several other synth pedals - it's my personal compromise and for me considerably better than the "nothing at all" alternative.

 

Edited 2 hours ago by Al Krow

[EmmettC]

20 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

The tracking speed is worrying. Almost all the synth bass clips I have seen using processed bass guitar are slow to medium paced songs, or ones with a lot of space between the notes in the bass part. 

It can be really frustrating, it's Abba of all things that's highlighting this for me. The intro to Does Your Mother Know, I'm back to just using a dirty octave sound on my Octabvre because live (and probably faster than it should be) the tracking just isn't reliable enough on the MXR or C4. That's why I like a big pedal board though, if one thing fails, or just can't be made to work for a song, I have plenty of other things I can use instead.

 

[Woodinblack]

2 hours ago, Al Krow said:

- if, as you say, the audience doesn't notice the difference between us playing a song without any synth, then they're even less likely to notice the difference between a keys synth and a quality bass-pedal synth?

 

I don't think thats meant as a sound difference, the bass synth can sound just the same as a key synth, its the tracking/latency/performance. Keeping the synth consistant on a bass requires quite a lot of discipline which you don't need on actual keys - the actual keys never glitch out or fail to notice where you are playing or respond quicker to higher notes than lower notes etc.d

 

I don't take keys as it is another to have, but I do take a 16 pad sample pad, and play that for keys on somethings, chords and piano sounds etc. Thats powered from a USB lead from the back of my pedalboard (the HB spaceship ones)

[Woodinblack]

20 minutes ago, EmmettC said:

It can be really frustrating, it's Abba of all things that's highlighting this for me. The intro to Does Your Mother Know, I'm back to just using a dirty octave sound on my Octabvre because live (and probably faster than it should be) the tracking just isn't reliable enough on the MXR or C4. 

 

Thats not good, it isn't a particularly a fast riff (and we play it faster because.. you know, drummers), but our cover is more like the arctic monkeys so its just distortion for me.

[BigRedX]

Using pitch detection to drive a synth engine is almost always going to be a complete non-starter for bass guitarists. The laws of physics just won't allow it. The very best detection systems require at least one and a half wave cycles of clean waveform to detect the pitch, which means every note below open D is going to have noticeable latency. And remember this is the best case scenario. Any imperfections in your playing technique or signal processing before the pitch detection is going to make that detection time longer which is going to result in more latency, glitches and pitch instability. That's why to me it makes more sense to dispense with pitch detection and to instead apply Filter and VCA processing to the actual signal instead. Of course in order to do this properly your are going to need full ADSR control over both the filter and volume which will mean attack and release threshold controls and side chaining so that the clean signal can be used for the triggers and an signal with whatever effects you want to run before the filter can be processed. Also you'll limit cross mod to amplitude only and you won't be able to do oscillator sync which limits how close you are going to get to some synth sounds.

[LukeFRC]

47 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

Using pitch detection to drive a synth engine is almost always going to be a complete non-starter for bass guitarists. The laws of physics just won't allow it. The very best detection systems require at least one and a half wave cycles of clean waveform to detect the pitch, which means every note below open D is going to have noticeable latency. And remember this is the best case scenario. Any imperfections in your playing technique or signal processing before the pitch detection is going to make that detection time longer which is going to result in more latency, glitches and pitch instability. That's why to me it makes more sense to dispense with pitch detection and to instead apply Filter and VCA processing to the actual signal instead. Of course in order to do this properly your are going to need full ADSR control over both the filter and volume which will mean attack and release threshold controls and side chaining so that the clean signal can be used for the triggers and an signal with whatever effects you want to run before the filter can be processed. Also you'll limit cross mod to amplitude only and you won't be able to do oscillator sync which limits how close you are going to get to some synth sounds.

Except it's not a complete non starter is it? Because you're taking you time to post on a thread about a pedal that actually exists and is selling well for bass players that uses pitch detection to drive a synth engine. 
Is it a solution for every case, obviously not. Is it the perfect solution, clearly not for the reasons you've just explained... yet here we are with other people working around the limitations and bending the laws of physics. 

Some folk will decide the MXR is the perfect flavour for their band, others will use something else, or will use keyboards, or in your case you will skip synth bass sounds as you don't have space for a keybords or want to use pedals other than your multifx unit, and others will have no interest in synth bass whatsoever... the point is different people will come to different conclusions and decisions.

Someone who owns the pedal the thread is about and giving opinions on how it tracks on "does your mother know" is far more interesting.