BigRedX
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The difference is partly in design and partly in how the instrument is used. There are essentially three types: 1. 28" scale length, tuned B-B. Pickups in typical guitar bridge and neck positions, usually humbuckers or P90 style fat single coils. This is a baritone guitar. 2. 30" scale length, tuned A-A. Pickups in typical guitar bridge and neck positions, usually humbuckers or P90 style fat single coils. This is also a baritone guitar. 3. 30" scale length, tuned E-E. Three single coil pickups with the centre pickup roughly in P-Bass position in proportion to the shorter scale length. This is a Bass VI (or GuitarBass). Of course as you can see there is some potential overlap between types 2 and 3 as to what could be considered a baritone guitar and what could be a Bass VI, and much of the distinction will be down to how the instrument is played and what sorts of sounds it is capable of. Personally I find that the centre pickup is almost mandatory for getting a decent bass guitar sound out of one of these instruments. Players who favour bass like the Gibson EB0 with a single pickup at the neck may disagree and be perfectly happy with a set of Bass VI strings on a type 2 instrument. One thing that nearly all these instrument have in common though is that they are aimed primarily at guitarists and have guitar neck widths and string spacing at the bridge. Maybe the test for whether a 30" scale instrument is a baritone guitar or a Bass VI would be if you can fit a set of the heavier Bass VI strings (with either a 95 or 100 low E) without having the modify the bridge and/or tailpiece, tune it E-E and still be able to intonate it correctly. And of course then there are instruments that don't fit into any of the above categories like the Shergold Marathon 6-string bass (and the Eastwood copy) which has wider neck and bridge string spacing and a single pickup somewhere between the bridge and centre positions, but still a 30" scale length. With a bit of luck you are slightly less confused now. -
It is Mac compatible for operation. It just requires a Windows machine to program it. I'd have though for something as simple as that they'd be able to write the programming app as a web page.
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Yes, but like all Line6 Expression pedals It's quite hard to operate. However, I wonder if it is accessed separately via a TSR jack and therefore an appropriately wired footswitch might work. Is that what you were going to suggest? Edit: just had a look at AFAICS the pedal part of an external expression pedal uses a 10kΩ linear pot wired between the T and S connections on a jack plug. That MIGHT mean that the footswitch part goes between the ring and sleeve. May have to make up a lead and experiment... Unless of course you can confirm this via the Facebook group?
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I was going to say that's the one, but on further exploration, it appears that you need a Windows computer to actually set the required keystroke. Doh!
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Thanks! Interesting, but includes several things I don't like for gigging use - wireless (and Bluetooth wireless at that) and battery powered. There doesn't even appear to be an option to power it from a standard USB mains adaptor. And too large and expensive considering I'll probably only be using one of the switches on it. However I'll bear it in mind as a last resort of nothing more suitable gets suggested.
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I was hoping to do this with my Line6 Helix, but so far no method has been suggested that doesn't also interfere with my normal use of this device, so I need to look elsewhere for this functionality. Both of the bands I play in use a MacBook Pro running Logic Pro X to provide audio backing (mainly drums) and MIDI control of various on-stage devices. At the moment I control this from the keyboard of the MacBook. I would like to be able to start and pause Logic playback using a footswitch. I don't need a massive/comprehensive multi-function device, just something that does these two things (on Logic they are both activated by pressing the space bar, once to start, again to pause and again to restart from the paused position). Ideally a single footswitch and even better if it had an LED to show it is running. Connection to the Mac can either be via USB or MIDI DIN cable (MIDI DIN preferred). Anything like this available? The simpler the better.
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On the Helix Floor the I believe the Expression Pedal Toe Switch is the "joy-stick" like switch to the right of the display. I would want my foot going anywhere near that and also it's even further up on the device which means that there are more switches I might inadvertently press. Looks like I'm going to have to look elsewhere for this functionality. Pity. One of the things that initially attracted me to the Helix was the fact that it could be used as controller pedal and well as a multi-effects unit. Looks as though the controller functions are more limited then I was lead to believe.
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Have you run the mix through a frequency analyser plug-in to see what is happening?
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Thanks! I've just had a reply from Line6 saying it's not possible although the work-around they suggested to get my sequencer function on a switch sounds like they may have misunderstood my question and why I want to do these things. I've sent a follow-up question. One possible work-around would be to use an external footswitch and give it the required function, although if you've been following my other recents posts on the effects section, I'm trying to cut down on the amount of pedals I have on stage, however AFAICS there are only sockets for EXP2 and EXP3 which would normally be expression pedals. Will these sockets accept a momentary footswitch? I don't have one yet so I wanted to check before I go an buy one and then find it doesn't work. It looks like you need to register separately for the Ideascale page, and so I'm waiting for a moderator to approve my account.
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That's brilliant. Thank you. Ideally I'll get an answer from Line 6 through the support ticket I have opened, which I'll post here and you can forward on to the Facebook group. Edit: and if it's not possible is, can you add it as a feature request via Facebook or is there another method for this?
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Unfortunately I don't do Facebook anymore, so we'll have leave it there.
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I don't do Facebook anymore so unfortunately not.
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I'm still waiting for a response from Line6 on this, but just in case someone on here has already figured out how to do it... FS6 (top row, furthest right) is marked as "Preset/ Stomp Hold To Edit". I have no use for either of these functions and would like to replace them with a command of my own set up using the Command Centre to allow me start and pause the playback of the backing my bands use live. Adding this functionality is not a problem, but the switch still retains it's original function which means that when I start the playback the rest of the switches go into "Stomp" mode and I can't access my snapshots (it's set up with 4 presets along the top row and 4 snapshots on the bottom). Any ideas? Or is this function hardwired onto FS6? Ideally I'd also like to swap the functions of FS6 and FS12 (and also FS1 and FS7) so that functions I use while I'm playing are all on the bottom row of foot switches and I don't have to worry about inadvertently pressing the wrong switch while trying to access a top row switch mid-performance.
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So the three MIDI outs all supply the same 16 channels rather than being 3 separate MIDI buses like a multi-bus MIDI interface? Unless you can assign a particular MIDI channel to a particular MIDI output, I would have thought that there is a greater danger of running out of MIDI bandwidth first. Can you set the resolution of the CC data that the LFOs generate? A sine wave LFO could fairly quickly flood the MIDI data stream with CC messages, and that's before we consider pumping MTC/clock data etc.
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Because if you look carefully Rich has replaced to "i" in his word with a similar looking character to bypass the swear filter.
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Yes it could, but the pickup type and positioning say that first and foremost it's been designed as a "guitar". Also as I said, I suspect that the bridge may need modification to be able to fit the heavier gauges of Bass VI strings. IMO there's more to a Bass VI than taking a guitar and sticking a 30" scale neck on it.
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How good is a 30" Baritone tuned A-A on strummed first position chords? I used to have a 28" tuned B-B that was great and I loved the low sound/tuning, but all the Bass VIs I've owned/tried have been useless for anything more than 2 notes, or such high register that I might as well play the part on an ordinary guitar.
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Baritone guitar rather than Bass VI. Not only does it say it in the product title but also implied by the positioning of the pickups in the typical guitar locations rather than the Bass VI ones. That's not to say you couldn't try using it as a Bass VI, but it may require some extra work at the bridge in order to fit the heavier gauge Bass VI strings, and IME a Bass VI always benefits from the centre pickup for decent bass sounds.
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Depending on your DAW, creating a MIDI CC LFO should be easy. I can "draw" one in seconds using the hyper edit page of Logic. I suspect that if I searched on-line I'd be able to find plenty of ready made examples that I could download for my DAW of choice.
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IMO when you only have a single pedal, mounting it on a pedal board seems to be overkill to solve a problem that shouldn't be there in the first place. I would have thought that devices like this are designed to try and reduce stage floor clutter, not add to it. If this was the device for me I would hope to be able to use it as my only pedal and therefore wouldn't want the added hassle and bulk of a pedal board for a single device. Since the early 90s all my "pedal boards" have been a single multi-footswitch device, ideally with smallest footprint possible. Only two have required an additional power connection - one used a standard IEC mains connector, and the other had a mechanism that held the cable in place to prevent it from being pulled out. All the other took their power directly from one of the rack devices they were controlling via the same cable as the data.
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Which is one of the reasons why I haven't used individual pedals since the mid 80s. Even before I went the multi effects route anything with non-locking power connectors was safely put away in a rack case where there was no danger of anything becoming disconnected mid-performance.
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The thing is that a lot of people who are doing MIDI manipulation live are already using a computer at the centre of their performance set-up. In order to compete this device needs to be essentially bomb-proof in build and operation. The PSU connector doesn't say that to me. Given that everyone else apart from EBS-freak and myself seems to be perfectly happy to take devices with consumer-grade computer connections on stage without cocooning them in gig-hardened cases means that we are in the minority and not the target customer base.
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My pizza analogy would be that instead of a proper tasty pizza-dough base that shows off the flavours of the topping, you've been given the cardboard or polystyrene packing.
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Who thought that ideal colour match for an exotic blue top would be an anaemic featureless piece of "natural" wood?
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Considering that they are both better known than I am, I suspect they will already be eligible and their share will probably reflect their overall popularity, so nothing to be worried about.
