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James CullMember
Trick for anyone following this thread. The EHX Chil Switch can give you the best of bost worlds. The Dig Deep is fantastic for adding a fake bass to a rythmn guitar – acoustic or electric. I find it needs splitting, eq before and after and compression. Consider the Dig Deep to be like a bass guiar that follows you bottom notes – which is what you need most of the time.
But sometimes you want to take a little monophonic riff or solo with a fake bass – and thats where the Bass9 is the star of the show. So you can set it up with the Chill Siwtch and momentarily engage it when you want the bass to sound louder and better/different.
Two very different things but both are amazing. One day somebody will put them both together but this is as good as it gets right now.
James CullMemberOK – I now have both the Bass9 and the OPFXS and I can give my honest opinion about both. The Bass9 sounds the best. I play multi instruments, and I own bass guitars and bass synths. A box like this will never sound exactly like a bass guitar. The harmonics and artifacts of pitch shifting are too harsh for my taste, but the filtered tones can sound very deep and smooth, like dub or synth bass tones, and I find that very pleasing and useable. But – for the live solo player wanting to add mono bass to rynthm guitar playing – the lack of mono low note priority is a show stopper for me. Some players will find ways to play – especially finger style players.
The OPFXS Dig Deep does what it says it does. It creates a mono low note priority octave down fundamental. It rolls off somewhere up the G string in a musically useful way. It sounds and behaves very much like the rack rig I have put together and have been gigging with. I think my rig sounds better though. I think they have made a basic mistake that I made at first. Assuming that a bass guitar is all about the low fundamental frequency. It’s actually more about the 2nd harmonic – but the fundamental is important for establlishing that relationship with the 2nd harmonic. So for any developers out there – you want to keep that 2nd harmonic which is the original fundamental from your guitar.
The Dig Deep is probably going to suffer from people who don’t understand what it is. Most guitar amps and even small bass amps can’t cope with the octave down fundamental. It’s a very bland sinewave-like tone that does not sound good without being blended with the guitar tone. The clean tone doesn’t have any filtering or eq – so as a standalone box it’s not a total solution. But there is nothing else like it – and I appreciate being able to downsize my rig.
This is a problem that has stumped the best brains in the business. I’ve seen many attempts and failures to crack this problem.
I see the Bass9 as being the Boss OC3 killer – it’s about time But for me, the OPFXS Dig Deep is the answer to my prayers for now. If EHX could connect the dots and make a pedal that does it all I would be very grateful.
James CullMemberWow – EHX built the Bass9. I have it now. Like any of the 9 pedals – I don’t like all the sounds. But – if ithey can give you one sound that you love then it’s worth it. For me it is the Virtual Bass. I love fat analog octavers like the EHX Multiplexer (I prefer it to the OC2). But I need the freedom from glitching that plyphonic digital pitch shifting gives me. I have been using a Pitchfork with analog LPF to get a fat analog tone (the Knockout pedal is excellent for this). But the Bass9 gives me this sound in one pedal – so that’s the good news.
The bad news is that EHX did not respond to my offer of a revolutionary new idea that gives monophonic low note priority octave down from a polyphonic strummed chord. So the Bass9 still can’t work with full chords such as an open G. That’s a real shame – because I think that idea could have been patented by EXH and could have sold millions of pedals.
It looks like OPFXS has beaten EHX to the money – check out the Dig Deep pedal! I have just ordered one – I think this might be the answer to my dreams. I currently have to use a rack of studio gear to pull off this trick. My idea can be done fully analog. The end result is very similar to a DBX 120 except it gives a solid monophonic octave down from any chord (the DBX 120A sort of does the bottom E string then fades out).
I don’t know how OPFXS have done this – one their Facebook page he says he developed this in 2 days. I took 2 years. I think his is digital – i’m guessing it uses FFT and extracts just the lowest frequency at any given monent and divides it down and filters it. Sounds good to me – if it works as well as it looks then i’ll be buying back ups.
I still think my method is unique and patentable – and an analog box would have zero latency. Might even sound better – but digital is getting very close now.
A simple crossover is NOT the answer. Because a strummed open G chord gives a horrible clash between the low G and B notes. My method (and as far as I can thell the OPFXS Dig Deep) give just the low G with no clashing. A crossover like the Boss OC3 or the Bass9 just can’t do this – it’s a shame.
My method uses steep crossover filters – but not in the way you would normally expect. But if the Dig Deep does it all I can just get on with making music and not having to cart a rack around. yay!
James CullMemberLine 6 have a fairly good pattern tremolo built into many of their products – it’s very programmable and syncs to midi.
To make the ultimate slicer you would probably need presets and midi sync and swing/shuffle percentage and ADSR – it would need a good GUI. TC with their Toneprints might be better placed for making something like this.
October 24, 2019 at 4:40 am in reply to: When are you bringing out a ’Strings’ pedal as in Orchestra Strings #125594James CullMemberHave you tried the Mel9 and Synth9? I love both of them – even both layered together. You can add chorus and delays and reverb to make them more lush. I also find them to be voiced fairly low and dark – but if you add a POG or a Pitchfork you can get higher strings – and octave or two up. See the thread about a Super 9 …. I think EHX have the technology to pull of something amazing.
There is the Boss SY300 which is very programable. But in my opinion, EHX ihas the best sounding putchshifting technology, and the SY300 is a bit artifacty-y sounding for my taste.
James CullMemberThere is already the EHX Crash Pad. But that doesn’t track pitch. Pitch tracking is very hard to do well – I can’t think of anyone who has done this well. Pitch to midi is probably better – and that could then control any synth. I have a Sonnus G2M that does this. If EHX could make a box that tracks pitch it would be a shame to limit it to just noise. May as well have a full fledged mono synth – like a Pigronix Mothership. But frankly – I don’t think they track well enough for most musical purposes.
James CullMemberProbably the most requested pedal in these forums …. I own all the 9 pedals and gig with them. I would certainly love to be able to reduce my pedal board footprint – I can’t take them all to small gigs. I love to layer them – so that is an important consideration. There probably isn’t a need for more than two at once – so what would be really great iwould be a dual engine box that would allow two sounds on seperate outputs. I also love to add FX to these … the built FX are a bit weak compared to what we know EHX can do.
I love the EHX 9 sound – it has character that I can’t get out of a Roland SY300 or other options. I would love a Super 9 pedal that takes this to another level with midi selectable presets – 128 please. It would great if this was very deep (like an SY300) and had a good user interface for tweakability. Imagine being able to select the drawbars and shape with EQ or vary the vibrato of the Mel9 sounds, etc, etc.
It would be great to have some expression pedal inputs and switch inputs. There is potential here for an amazing musical instrument. A small pedal format is prefered – we don’t have room for big boxes these days – too many other fun pedals.
James CullMemberThe 9 series pedals are very digital and not updateable. I would really love to have an advanced version with midi presets etc … also it would be great if it included the Bass9 that has been suggest in the New Pedal Idea thread.
James CullMemberI have been on a quest for system (ideally a pedal) that can create a monophonic bass line from plyphonic 6 string rythmn guitar. I play bass and have many bass guitars and synths – but for solo or duo gigs I just don’t want to work with another bass player or use backing tracks.
I have tried many things – including special pickups and midi – but nothing has really worked fast enough or accurately enough. The real problem has been removing all the unnecessary notes and leaving just the lowest played note for the octave shifting.
But I have now solved the problem and have an invention that I am currently gigging with succesfully. I believe my invention is a unique new audio processing concept and is probably patentable. I’m not a patent expert and i’m not a pedal builder so I am looking for a pedal buider who can take this to the market. I think the market for this pedal is massive as many people on the internet have asked for this type of pedal and there just isn’t an adequate solution yet.
I own a Boss OC3 which promises something like this but it simply cannot do what I want. My basic requirement is to be able to strum an open G chord and just get a root octave G and to strum an open D chord and just get a root octave D. If the OC3 is set to get the D note then it will not filter out the B note in the open G and it sounds very boad.
I have also owned a Little Thunder pickup which promises something like this but it only gives 2 strings of bass and fails to work on an open D chord. Or if the 3 string option is enabled it sacrifices the low note priority and defeats the basic idea. I did nott like the sound quality and the many problems associated with that pickup so I could not use this for anything serious.
I also have Roland GK3 pickup guitars and their bass modeling for independant strings is quite good but there is no option for low note prioirity. I have found midi istoo slow and gives false notes.
You can hear my invention at https://youtu.be/05qrnSVsfHY
I apologise for the poor sound quality from my laptop mics – you will need headphones or good speakers to hear the bass effect.
The engineering concept can be applied various ways and using various types of hardware. I believe the best format would be a pedal such as the EHX 9 series. I aown all of the 9 series pedals and it is amazing to combine this bass with the organs and strings etc to create a full band sound whch just needs a drum machine.
Please let me know if you are interested – I was reluctant to share my secret because it took many years to develop it. But I want a few of thse pedals for my own use and I know that thousands of others will benefit from this too. This is a unique business opportunity and I am prepared to be very reasonable for the right pedal builder.
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