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Re: OT: Guitar Synth



Goddard, Duncan schrieb:
> if you can find one that still works, the peavey midibase (sic) takes
>  some beating- it uses split-frets switching, so the piezo pickups in
>  the bridge are for dynamics only. there are strain gauges in the 
> bridge too, so it supports pitch-bend which can (by judicious editing
>  at your synth/sampler/w.h.y.) be "synchronised" with the actual bass
>  sound.

I still have one, and as far as I know they don't use strain gauges, its
simple a traditionnal pitch detection for correcting the pitch. As the
range is defined already by the played fret, it can do that much faster
and accurate. Unfortunately the pitch resolution for the bending in some
of the playing modes is pretty limited, due to limitations of Midi, they
have to play a note, and then pitch bend it...

> I don't know why there was never a guitar version- steve chick (who 
> dreamt the thing up & licensed it first to valley arts & then peavey)
>  was a bass player himself, & maybe he thought the guitar market was 
> already well-enough catered for. maybe the split frets approach 
> wouldn't work so well with the closer string-spacing of a guitar. 
> dunno.

The latency problem for pitch detection on a bass is so much worse than
for a guitar, that the effort wouldn't be worth it. Axon solved the
issues mostly by cutting the latency to roughly a fourth of a cycle,
whereas traditional pitch tracking would need at least two cycles, which
is pretty huge for the low string of a bass...

> they look awful, though.

Like all of the Peavey gear, but its pretty solid, I also have a little
mixer I don't want to miss...

> but for a 15 year old instrument, & an esoteric one at that, it's
> doing pretty well.

I don't know how many have been built, including its predecessor from 
Wal. (Which certainly is a better bass, but the Midi electronic was more 
like the prototype for the Peavey...)

Stefan

-- 
Stefan Tiedje------------x-------
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