LeftyBassist.com

I stumbled upon this site accidentally looking up ways to improve my midi bass tracking. The technology seems to be similar to Peavy's Cyberbass, which had sensors in a vairty of places on the bass including the neck to improve tracking. I realize this is not for everyone, but a large reason bassists don't get into midi bass is because they've yet to come up with a way to track lower frequencies fast enough...until now.

I get excellent tracking results using piccolo strings on my Carvin LB50, but that introduces the new problem: how do I reclaim bass frequencies again? I've tried running it through a POG setting an octave lower, as well as other octave pedals and even triggering samples basses on my laptop, but none really feel or sound natural. If this bass does what the manufacturers claim, then you'll be able to use midi sounds alone or combined with superb tracking on an instrument that's in the right register and can be played as a regular bass too.

http://www.industrialradio.com.au/home.html

The system is indeed very similar to the Peavey (and Wal!) midi basses. Nice, and clever! The position of the LCD display is clever too.

Man, I used to own a MIDI bass from Steve Chick a long time ago. That bass was a truly international bass because the system was from Australia,the fitting job was done in L.A at Valley Art Guitar Center and my bass was a custon built here in Montreal by Pierre Laporte. That bass rocked big time. I used it 4 times on the Tonight show with Celine Dion.

I got it stollen in my house along with 2 others basses ( a custom fretless and a Steinberger LX-2) a long time ago. I did retrieve 2 of them but not the MIDI bass.

I seriously thinking about getting the new one. I miss playing those synth bass sounds. I even did an Opera with that bass switching to arco and pizz samples in a fraction of second. I truly miss it.

Sylvain

Slybass, is this you and is this your midi bass in question?:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwFMYKGr ... re=related

How cool was it working with Celine?

FYI, I was on a chat a few months ago regarding the Peavy CyberBass, and I was told that a lefty conversion would be relatively simple, as you'd just need to change the nut and flip the wires in the neck and bridge. Is that basically what you had to do to use Steve's system in your custom lefty? A converted righty Peavy Cyberbase is not as cool as a real lefty, but considering the Industrial Radio Midi bass is $4000, I might go the route of picking up a used righty Peavy and flipping it.

OMG what a hair do !!! Those 90's.

Yes this is exactly it. I have tears to my eyes.

Working with her was a pleasure but was hard because we were put in demanding situations like this and 20,000,000 viewers watching.
I remenber once doing that show and had to learn the Peabo Bryson's duet in the airplane going to the show.

My bass was totally custom for a lefty, then SC sold it to Peavey and they changed too many things on it. So this is why it wasn't as performing as the original concept.

I don't know about the conversion but I'm sure it is possible since evrything is electronic.

The new bass is an improvement of the original concept. The tracking is better then the original which to me was pretty amazing at the time.

Man, I'm pretty pleased with that performance on the Tonight show. The synth bass sounds good even in a slick track like that.


Thank you very much for the link, I didn't know it existed,

Sylvain

The bass sounded great in that mix.

The "Using Midi Bass" page a has a great close-up of the individual bridges that are designed to look at first glance like a Fender bridge. Cool! And, on the Specifications page, they mention it is available as a lefthand model also.

Yes I know they will do it.
My friend Brian Newcombe from Vancouver was really involved in the developement of the bass.
I heard that there might be a 5 strings version in the future,but, I kind of like the 4 strings and play it like having an Octaver.

Sylvain

Well I've got a few dozen questions about these basses, so I'll post my finding once I hear back from them.

I Just want to let you know, I order one this week. Ice blue metallic with a white pearl pick-guard and matching headstock.
I think it will be totally cool.

I miss that technology. Now on gigs,when needed I have to play keyboard for bass synth sounds and it pisses me off 'cuz I don't practice it,just playing it the best I can. Plus,this bass will become a MIDI controller for programming in my studio. Great, less and less keyboard. I whish I would be better at it but I prefer play my bass .

Here is the color I picked:

Wow, excellent color choice. That's going to be stunning. Sly, you MUST let us know how it is when you get it. I'd love a review, especially in how the technology has progressed/improved since those earlier attempts.

Congrats!

Thanks for the support. I think it will be amazing.

Honestly,the original design was excellent for tracking. On the youtube video,I do think the feel and phrasing of the bass synth is good on such an instrument and it was a song by David Foster and he is my mentor for bass synth and we didn't play that song a lot live unfortunately. So it was even pretty new.

You have to play clean on an instrument like that and I sincerly had a feel for it because bass synth was the reason I picked up bass at first place!

If the tracking is even better then it was, then this is the ultimate bass controller.

The only drawback from the early design was the channels they had to dig under the fingerboard which made the bass sound thin but I didn't mind it because I played only synth with it and used it like an octaver.

I'll keep you posted for sure,


Sly

With the Nordstrand PUPs in there now I'd imagine the bass will sound better than they did. Still, it would be great if he offered a 3 band active preamp option. (Or does he?)

I had compiled a list of questions for Steve Chick, but perhaps you know the answer to some of them?:

1. Active preamp/EQ option?
2. Does string choice/gauge make a difference in tracking results? Industrial Radio is claiming latency is consistent on all strings, but info is inconsistent on their site on various pages (some pages say 6ms, some say between 5ms-9ms)
3. is the left handed model a "true" lefty (i.e. lefty neck, layout, pots turn correct way, etc)?
4. Are the piezo string saddles solely for midi detection, or can they be used as acoustic piezos as well?
4. Weight?

I don't know about the preamp. But I'm sure it can be discuss with him. I personally would like to keep the bass passive.

As far as strings,my best set-up I found was a regular gauge Maxima gold plated. These were fantastic on that bass because it was really tight and the vibrations waves were shorts and found that this helps tracking.

I do believe at that price I'll have a left-handed neck .

For pots it might be something I'll address to Steve but sincerly I don't know what is normal and backward because most my basses are differents.

I don't think the piezos are for bass sound but I can ask him. I don't care that much about that personally.

I think the weight will be like a normal "Fender". The interface is a separate unit.

Keep you posted on this,

Sly

Here is a youtube link I received from them yesterday.
Very nice ! I can't wait to have mine.

http://www.youtube.com/industrialradiotv


Sly

Watched a couple of the youtube videos - man, that is one cool bass! That bass could pose serious problems for the player... like never leaving your practice room, because it's too fun to play!

LOL Very funny and probably true !!!

Wow! Thanks for posting those YouTube clips. A picture (or in this case, a bunch of videos with sound) are worth $1000 bucks (or in this case, $4000).

Allow me to play devil's advocate for a moment, if for no other reason than to dot all my "i"s and address all questions before I take the costly plunge myself (T/B/A once some money shows up):

1. I watched all 11 videos. I'm a bit surprised that there are virtually no clips showing it's polyphonic capabilities. The only instance I found was in video #8 at the tail end, where he plays a couple of chords high up on the neck. I'm wondering if this is just an oversight or if the bass has problems tracking more than single notes below a certain range, as the chordal work he does is above the 12th fret.

2. The slapping video is impressive in that he shows how well and fast the bass can track. I wish there were some more smoking videos of speedy, dexterous playing to further drive the point home, however, and I'm also wondering if rapid tracking and transient response with a sharp attack are required to achieve those kinds of fast tracking results. I know with pitch-to-midi technology (such as Roland's GK/GR systems), the sensitivity can be adjusted accordingly for how you intend to play the part (i.e. hard touch, soft touch, tapping, etc.), which is also needs to be adjusted within your sound processor/midi keyboard parts in order to achieve the best performance results. Sound patches with a sharp, short attack/decay, such as a snare drum or marimba, will almost always track better than a patch with a long attack/release, at least in the world of pitch-to-midi recognition (though flubs won't be as well-concealed as, say, a string patch with a soft attack/long release). I see in other videos posted that he can clearly slap, pluck, and hammer on/off to trigger his sounds, but in the only other instance where he shows some fast playing the particular patch he chose doesn't really do justice, since it's a low dubby synth bass tone with a long attack/delay that sounds mushy when he tries to fly on the neck. Again, probably not a flaw in the midi bass itself, but just the wrong choice of sound patch to exemplify it's capabilities.

Wow! Just checked out the YouTube demoes. Very cool! Being a bit of a techno dweeb myself I think this looks like a fantastic instrument with a ton of potential. I was looking at the pic of the bridge though.... is it just me or do those individual bridges look just a smidge out of alignment?

Just to clarify the last post: not the saddles of course, but each whole bridge.