hipshot bridge with ghost piezo system

[winterfire666]

has anyone tried one? Im thinking of having one on my xylem custom bass
Any knowledge on the matter or opinions would be greatly appreciated, cheers!

[ikay]

I have one on my ACG and it adds a completely new 'acoustic-like' dimension to the sound, Very airy with extended highs and lows. Great bit of kit. Also works very well in combination with a mag pickup. You'll need a piezo buffer/preamp of some sort to get the best out of it. I tried the Graphtec Acoustiphonic preamp which worked fine but the mid/dark settings are quite extreme. I'm currently using a Shadow PMS buffer which has 3-band miniature preset eq which allows a bit more tweakability.

There are other piezo saddle options out there such as RMC which apparently have better dynamic response and a preamp with optimised string to string eq but these are much more costly than Graphtec. If you want the very best then look at RMC but the Graphtec is a good affordable option.

[Eljay]

After owning a Godin A4SA (synth access) I had this bass built with the GHOST piezo system combined with a hexaphonic input, for use with the then-current Roland GR-20 Bass Synth. They (Roland) have updated, but this system is compatible.

What it lets me do, with this bass, is balance the mag/piezo system with the GR-20. There are a BUNCH of patches and effects/variation on the Roland.

I can dial in a full-on trumpet, string section, vocal chorus, piano, percussive, etc etc etc sound; or best of all-MIX enough synth effect in with enough mag pup bass to produce some amazing tones.

It is a blast and a half. The quality of the GHOST/Hipshot set-up is IMO superb, and it tracks very well.

This set-up is an alternative of course to retro-fitting a Roland pick-up to a bass.

This particular instrument is a BEE Bass from builder Fred Bolton:
[url="http://www.beebasses.com/"]http://www.beebasses.com/[/url]

He does a lot of ERB work; Me- a fretted-four specialist. The bass itself is light and very tight, the Delano pup is so hot it burns your fingers!

That combined with the GHOST makes it a pretty cool addition to my shtuff, I think.

Edited July 20, 2012 by Eljay

[winterfire666]

many thanks for the replys, i wasnt aweare of RMC, it loooks cool im going to ask anthony at xylem if he has used either of the systems before i think.
also i didnt realise you could have midi options too, oh the possibilities!
although i dont know if i would use use midi live, im a bit of and old school rock/metal type, with simple needs.
choices choices, iv got some thinkin to do.

thanks again!

[Mr. Foxen]

Sansamp Paradriver makes a good buffered preamp for piezo bridge.

[Eljay]

[quote name='winterfire666' timestamp='1342787214' post='1740920']
many thanks for the replys, i wasnt aweare of RMC, it loooks cool im going to ask anthony at xylem if he has used either of the systems before i think.
also i didnt realise you could have midi options too, oh the possibilities!
although i dont know if i would use use midi live, im a bit of and old school rock/metal type, with simple needs.
choices choices, iv got some thinkin to do.

thanks again!
[/quote]

I'M and old school R&B pocket player (New School too). The toggles on the BEE Synth Bass let me go between Mag, Piezo, or Blend, then scroll thru the incredible array of patches from the GR-20 in my case.

Not really in use for straight-ahead lines, but I've done some recordings/performance with singer/songwriter types, Bass and Keys or Guitar/Vox only and it's a lot of fun to blend in say a cello sound to the mix.

There's also a benefit from playing say like a tenor sax- You need to really listen to and construct bass lines when you're output sounds quite like a sax!!

Good luck with your Xylem project; checked them out; pretty cool; remind me of Carl Thompson builds quite a bit.
Cheers.

Edited July 20, 2012 by Eljay