Hex pickup questions I have

[neshel]

I recently picked up a Fishman Tripleplay. It's pretty good with a little bit of sensitivity tweaking per string via the software interface. You can, and arguably should, do more by adjusting the saddles. Also I've messed around a bit with the Midi Guitar software. Despite its use of your indigenous pickup, it is in some ways better than a hex/translator device, because it pick ups more nuance in the attack. I can actually get tones when palm muting. However, Midi Guitar's tone bandwidth is easily exceeded, and you have to stop playing till it 'resets'.

In either case, though, the response is not quite like a 'live' string. Except I don't quite want the rawness of that. And pre-amp components, like a compressor, haven't gotten me there. I was thinking of the Bunker Electro-Mute....but they told me it'd be best in their own guitar.....and in any case I think what I need is a hex pickup....because I'm thinking of sending each channel to my computer, and running whatever signal processing for each string, so that I can tailor the attack, envelope, decay, and then timbre. Ideally, it would be USB.

I'd really like to go optical, or would piezo do? Any other thoughts?

[David King]

Did Lightwave ever come out with their guitar pickup? They had a hex optical midi interface with an Atari 13 pit output for bass.
Both Graphtech and RMC have piezo off the shelf solutions

[charrich56]

Neshel,

As David indicated, both Graphtech and RMC have solutions which produce individual preamped string outputs plus conventional guitar pickup outputs on a 13 pin Roland standard connector. They are both piezo systems. The Roland GK synth pickup (GK-1, GK-2, GK-4) uses the same interface but gives a magnetic pickup signal for each string. All the onboard systems including the Roland GK get their power from the 13 pin connector as well, usually provided by the external equipment you plug the Roland-compatible interface into.

The 13 pin standard is pretty well understood and with a bit of Internet research and hacking you can get 6 to 8 channels of digital audio simultaneously into the computer. You could look at a pretty standard multichannel audio interface such as the M-Audio 1010LT for that task. Some custom cabling and maybe some homebrew electronics would be needed to do this if you were not going to use a device with a Roland-compatible input. .

Where it gets messy is if you are using software plugins for synthesis, you have to do a MIDI conversion somewhere. If you want to do that in the computer I am not aware of a general or cheap audio to MIDI converter that could run in real time, one instance on each string, and give you any better results than a dedicated unit like the Tripleplay, Axon AX-50, Roland GI-20, or Roland integrated guitar synth with guitar to MIDI out, could give you.

But you do have one big advantage with polyphonic multiple audio channels if you can get them into the computer -- you can do individual audio processing on each channel as well as real-time hex audio recording of the actual performance. There in fact is software out there to be able to do the audio to MIDI converson in non-real time -- and once you do that conversion you have both the MIDI and raw audio for each string separately and can do quite a bit with that in a non-realtime studio sense.

It sounds like you are wanting guitar to MIDI in real time with more tweakability. There are units which might be more amenable to response and tracking tweaking than the Triple Play although I don't know much about that new unit.

I have an Axon AX-50 which is a USB device that allows quite a bit of sensitivity and tracking adjustment plus some interesting effects. The basic guitar-to-MIDI area has been tried and refined for about 20 years now and the Triple Play you have is probably at or near the top of the heap for basic performance. Just being able to pick up a pitch from a palm-muted string would have been darn near impossible for the earlier generation of equipment.

What an ideal system might look like would be an integrated DSP analysis and resynthesis engine for each string, bypassing MIDI altogether. Just as a teaser, the average 3d graphics card these days for a PC has enough DSP horsepower to probably do this. No product currently exists to do this for guitar.

Apparently the folks at Antares might be worth checking out (their DSP powers the Peavey AT-200 autotune guitar) because rumor has it they are doing some pretty interesting things with guitars and DSP these days. Look at some of the feature packs they can provide for the AT-200.

-Charlie

[neshel]

Thank you, both of you. I didn't say midi in there, and I recently read in Wiki that one feature of analog synthesizers was to input an audio signal and manipulate it - not translate it beforehand. So, re-written, the point of import is: sending each channel to my computer, and running whatever signal processing for each string, so that I can tailor the attack, envelope, decay, and then timbre..

Timbral manipulation could be novel distortion algorithms that clip differently than a typical overdrive/distortion circuit.


So the Graphtech model (Ghost modular pickup system) seems not appropriate for this application. The RMC Poly-Drive I I'm not sure about.

It seems Antares is mainly doing vocal and intonation stuff.

Again, I think USB would be best. In this day I'm surprised it isn't more pervasive....

What an ideal system might look like would be an integrated DSP analysis and resynthesis engine for each string, bypassing MIDI altogether.

I had thought of this basic idea twenty years ago, and was told it wasn't feasible with, at least, consumer technology. If it quite easily is now, then yeah it's up to finding some wizard who'd want to do it.....



I found this, essentially doing what Ron Hoag did forty-five years ago. It's a few years old, and I haven't researched further, but the (low) cost is rather astounding:

Optical Guitar Pickup :: Create the Future Design Contest



As for software, I had wondered whether all six channels would be read individually, or whether I would need six instances of each software (chain).

[charrich56]

The catch on what you were posting originally is when you use the term "synthesizer." If you are running a synthesizer, you are creating a new tone and then doing whatever to process it and not using real live audio directly to control the pitch or frequency of the tone. That's where we assumed you wanted to do MIDI - because of the "synthesizer" word there .

If you are using an audio signal from a string and then changing it in some way with audio processing, technically it isn't synthesis in the conventional sense. Roland's VG series (VG-88, VG-99, etc.) blurs the line because it uses actual string signals and then can do very synthesizer-like things with them to make very radically different timbres.

I would disagree that the Graphtech Ghost system isn't suitable for your purposes. Just because it is Roland compatible doesn't mean you can't get the audio for each string out the 13 pin connector and use it to go one channel per string into your computer.

RMC actually made and probably still makes a "breakout box" that allows you to patch the audio from each string in their Roland GK-compatible system into a separate recording input so you can record multichannel or do multichannel things on your computer in real time.

If you are using a PC, it's fairly easy to roll your own VST plugin and use a DAW application to route all the strings simultaneously to whatever chain of effects you want, including your customized plugins. I was just suggesting the Roland interface because you have the most choices - magnetic and piezo - and off the shelf solutions for the hex pickups.

The optical thing sounds pretty neat but you might sink quite a bit of time and money into getting a solution there you can use.

-Charlie

[neshel]

@David: I forgot to mention: having followed Lightwave/Wilcox guitars for a few years, I don't recall any pick-up. I asked them a couple/few years ago about offering one, and they said it wouldn't work well on other guitars.... One thing of note is they haven't been able, despite ardently saying they wanted and were going to, to produce an electric guitar. Still only the Atlantis, and I haven't bought one to try.


@Charlie: RMC does have the Fanout box. So that would mean a pickup system, the Poly-drive, the Fanout...and then whatever audio interface. I'd rather a pickup/electronics configuration in the guitar, the Fanout box, and an external unit only if a USB interface couldn't be combined within the guitar body. The low cost of that optical pickup I linked above and all suggests it should be easy enough for others. A class-compliant A/D USB device may not be that difficult. Perhaps someone at KVR has done this or is willing to do this.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'roll my own VST plugin'.

[David King]

Wilcox et al are using an IR LED light source and two tiny solar cells to generate a sine-wave as the shadow of the string moves up and down between the cells. I've had to modify the boards for fatter strings on a bass but I can see why the system can't possibly cope with a string as thin as a .009. The shadow is simply too small to work.
I don't quite understand how the Mouser contest winner used photo diodes but apparently he got it to work.
I called up Ron Hoag a decade or so back. He lived in Oregon at the time and probably still does. I spent a lot of time with Lightwave's engineer, Keith on the phone fine-tuning my first lightwave midi-bass when the midi board first became available. My recollection is that it sort of worked in a kind of a way.
My subsequent efforts used RMC (Richard McClish) or Ghost (Dave Dunwoody). Richard's stuff is bulletproof. The Ghost stuff is great sounding especially for the price. I wouldn't hesitate to call any of these folks if you have questions.

Here's Roland's 13 pin connector pin out. http://johnp.net/projects/guitar-syn...d-pinouts.html

[charrich56]

Neshel,

Just for clarification, "roll your own VST plugin" -- there are some easy ways to create your own VST audio plugin. You can get a package for writing plugins where the basic setup and framework for the plugin are already written for you, and there's usually a library of prewritten functions for audio processing as well. So you just think up and roll your own processing chain within the plugin, and the package will save it as a working plugin.


SynthEdit is the best known one for the PC VST side. It isn't free but is very good.
SynthEdit - Build VST synth and effect plugins » SynthEdit

I don't know much about the Mac or Pro Tools world so can't comment there, but for PC VST there are several ways to do it in a reasonably painless way and there might be a free package which would work.

[charrich56]

Hey Neshel,

You might be interested in what Keith McMillen is doing with the Stringport interface -- it looks like the kind of thing you are describing. I just ran across this.

Overview

It is not currently production but he implies he will do another production run on it. The software looks both excellent and very deep and technical.

-Charlie

[neshel]

Hey Neshel,

You might be interested in what Keith McMillen is doing with the Stringport interface -- it looks like the kind of thing you are describing. I just ran across this.

Overview

It is not currently production but he implies he will do another production run on it. The software looks both excellent and very deep and technical.

-Charlie

Wow. I think you're right. (The only hitch for me is it's for Mac, but we'll see.....) I subscribed to the notification list. Thanks.

[David Schwab]

I would disagree that the Graphtech Ghost system isn't suitable for your purposes. Just because it is Roland compatible doesn't mean you can't get the audio for each string out the 13 pin connector and use it to go one channel per string into your computer.

If you use the Hexpander board, you get a 13pin compatible output. The 13 pin setup has the audio from each string available (pins 1-6).

The guitarist in the band I'm in has a Brian Moore iGuitar, with the RMC setup, and he just picked up a Roland ready Strat with the hex pickup.

I just got a used Parker P-38 with the Fishman bridge, and I'm going to retrofit the Ghost electronics to it and install a 13pin jack.

One of the things I want to do with the 13pin jack is run the output of each string into it's own distortion circuit. I used to have an ARP Avatar, and the hex fuzz feature left an impression on me.

[charrich56]

If you use the Hexpander board, you get a 13pin compatible output. The 13 pin setup has the audio from each string available (pins 1-6).

The guitarist in the band I'm in has a Brian Moore iGuitar, with the RMC setup, and he just picked up a Roland ready Strat with the hex pickup.

I just got a used Parker P-38 with the Fishman bridge, and I'm going to retrofit the Ghost electronics to it and install a 13pin jack.

One of the things I want to do with the 13pin jack is run the output of each string into it's own distortion circuit. I used to have an ARP Avatar, and the hex fuzz feature left an impression on me.

Hey David, the Roland VG-88 does do hex polyphonic distortion as one of the basic COSM instrument types. I think but don't have time to confirm that the VG-8 and VG-99 do as well. It's internal of course so you have to put up with how Roland decided to do it but they allow you to select different distortion types (OD, fuzz) for the set of six strings, and allow you to mix normal signal in, then put it into the rest of the signal chain (EQ, effects, reverb, amp modeling, etc.)

Used VG-88's come up on Ebay pretty regularly for not a huge fistful of shekels. Might be fun to play with if you haven't tried it already.


-Charlie

[David Schwab]

Hey David, the Roland VG-88 does do hex polyphonic distortion as one of the basic COSM instrument types. I think but don't have time to confirm that the VG-8 and VG-99 do as well. It's internal of course so you have to put up with how Roland decided to do it but they allow you to select different distortion types (OD, fuzz) for the set of six strings, and allow you to mix normal signal in, then put it into the rest of the signal chain (EQ, effects, reverb, amp modeling, etc.)

Used VG-88's come up on Ebay pretty regularly for not a huge fistful of shekels. Might be fun to play with if you haven't tried it already.


-Charlie

My friend just picked up one of the newer Roland guitar synths. He has an older one, and just picked up a newer one. It's not the VG COSM thing though. He picked up one of those (maybe the 88?), and when he realized it didn't do synth sounds, he returned it.

This is a classic rock cover band, so he just uses the synth to add some additional keyboard parts for stuff like Pink Floyd. Nothing extravagant. He thought the VG unit was cool, but wasn't of much use to him. He does have a Fractal AxeFX II though. That looks like fun.

Obviously after I mod my Parker I'll need something to plug it into. So I'll start checking out the used Roland stuff on eBay.

[neshel]

I wasn't impressed with the VG-88 when it was released. That's ooold tech now. It's supposed to be able to do synth-like sounds, I remember that.

There isn't an overdrive/distortion sound that satisfies my desires. If I were able to approach it totally in software, maybe. Or some direct transformation of the string sound into something electronic, retaining articulational nuance. Which is why I'm interested in the KMI unit....been waiting almost twenty years for that, and then I missed the boat. I'll wait for it to be released again.....or not.

Also, I've wondered since it's release why the Variax doesn't do separate output - what kind of pickup system does it use? - straight to USB. A total no-brainer that they dropped the ball down a pit on.

[David Schwab]

Also, I've wondered since it's release why the Variax doesn't do separate output - what kind of pickup system does it use? - straight to USB. A total no-brainer that they dropped the ball down a pit on.

It must process the strings separately, since it does 12-string guitars and different tunings and such. It's a piezo pickup. I guess they had no interest in people doing anything other than plugging it into an amp or a POD.

For overdrive, I really like my Johnson J-Station. That's what I use for recording guitar most of the time.