Midi pickups

[Tifstorey]

Hi,

I was looking at some midi pickups for my bass guitar, just really wondering if they were any good? Find it hard to think how they would work really, but before spending £80 on one, i was wondering if anyone has any experience with them and can let me know how good they are?

Thanks in advance,

Chris

 

[AlChuck]

What are these? The Roland thing? You do realize that you will need more than the pickups, you need the hardware that does the pitch-to-MIDI conversion too...

 

[Tifstorey]

Yeah, i looked at the roland ones. I know you need the hardware etc,, i was just wondering if they worked well. Didnt want to invest in them and for it to not work brilliantly...

 

[Schubert]

Hi,

I was looking at some midi pickups for my bass guitar, just really wondering if they were any good? Find it hard to think how they would work really, but before spending £80 on one, i was wondering if anyone has any experience with them and can let me know how good they are?

Thanks in advance,

Chris

We've used one on a strat (I think it was a GK 20 or something), You really do have to play precise with them the slightest bend of string and even string noise can produce unwanted notes. You can alter this by decreasing the tolerence by taking off the pitch bend on the controller. They are OK and you can get used to using them. If you do get to try one play a lead line with plenty of string bending and use a piano sound, it's very strange.

 

[ssscientist]

They say --- and I've never tried this with my own bass --- that the lower fundamental noter makes tracking all that much more dicey. The software/hardware combo needs at least one cycle of the wave to determine which note is being played, and lower frequency waves are necessarily further apart so this increases what we now call 'latency'.

And from what I knew of the 'try before you buy' situation ten or so years ago, it was like a sequencer package today with no demo available --- better read up and ask everyone you know who has one and maybe ask if you can use/play theirs because once the pickups are installed, they're NOT returnable. That pretty much squished my interest in midi-ing my bass.

 

[drstawl]

They say --- and I've never tried this with my own bass --- that the lower fundamental noter makes tracking all that much more dicey. .

Yup- the slower frequency with which bass notes vibrate increases the absolute time it takes to sample one example of the wave; so any system that would act *faster* would have to lean on harmonics of the notes that may or may not be present with enough amplitude in the signal to be of use by the pitch to MIDI converter algorithm.

 

[Tifstorey]

I thought there would be something wrong with it. I couldnt understand how pickups could work properly, and if they did, i thought there would be quite a few problems involved. Ill stick with my keyboard i think until theyve sorted out these 'glitches'. Thanks for everyones help!