Re: Re[2]: Vortex Applications Notes

[ejmd@erols.com (Ed Drake)]

John Pollock said:

>See, the JamEntity has features that are not only easily understood,
>but roughly quantifiable in dollars:  "It does what one of those 8-second
>Digitech boxes does, for only a little more.  It can expand to do double
>what the EH 16-second delay does, and if you can _find_ the EH box, it'll
>cost twice as much. PLUS it's MIDI controllable, and can slave to my drum
>machine--OR make my drum machine ITS slave, and therefore the slave of MY
>tapping toe!  And a chromatic tuner to boot?  That's worth $40-50 right
>there...Write it up!"

Until I'm able to afford an Echoplex, I've been trying to wring every bit
of performance out of my Jam Man.
I recently purchased a Ground Control pedal by Digital Music which is a
MIDI foot controller ( Thanks to Dave at Studio Seventeen for the
pre-purchase advice) and I've got it hooked up to my rig including the Jam
Man and it's working great!  If any of you have a Jam Man you owe it to
yourself to try to use MIDI to control all of its' functions using program
change messages. Tapping using the cheesy footswitches that come with the
Jam Man is OK but the response time using MIDI to tap is almost
instantaneous and my rhythmic loops have gotten noticeably tighter. Via
MIDI you have access to either of the 2 Loop modes (Punch-in or Phrased)
regardless of which Loop mode you actually have the front panel knob set on
(This I discovered by accident, it's not in the manual). With MIDI you can
also access some nifty loop fading functions not available from the front
panel and cueing up multiple loops on the fly is effortless as well. You
still have to have the mode knob set to the correct MIDI quarter note
setting for syncing to drum machines etc. On page 26 of the Jam Man manual
there is a list of the 20 parameters for Loop mode which are accessible via
MIDI. Parameters for the Echo and Sampling modes are available there too.

I know I've grumbled here lately at some of the Jam Man's limitations (lack
of undo and no odd time signature syncing, etc.) but it does do some things
very well and even when I get a 'Plex, I'm going to keep my Jam Dude and
use them together. Are any of you using a 'Plex and a Jam Man together ?
How well do they work together? Also are any of you 'Plexers out there
using MIDI to control things ?

While we are on the Vortex thread , how are you hooking up your Vortexes,
directly in line (as Lexicon suggests) or in the effects loop of a mixer ?
I'm just using mine in line but I haven't had time to retweak things to try
it out in the effects loop and I was wondering if any of you had tried it
and if you liked it better or not ?

                 Thanks and Best Regards    Ed Drake