From where in my chain do I do ad-hoc recording?

[rwillett]

Hi,

 

I have the music setup below in my office for noodling around upon.

 

I also have a Macbook with Logic Pro on BUT that's pretty much in constant use for paid non-music work. I have 2-3 iPads as well.

 

I very occasionally think that what I'm noodling with sounds quite good and I'd like to record it, much as I'd write notes in a notebook. I know I can't remember everything and wanted to capture it, no doubt crudely, so I can look back on it and perhaps work it up more properly in Logic Pro. Moving the Macbook around is not an option, so I'm trying to work out how to use the iPad. I have GarageBand and am familiar with that, but I'm trying to work out what I need to do here.

 

Should I put a small and cheap mini mixer between the ToneX and the Yamaha speaker? One output goes to the iPad through something like an iRig HD (which I have) to GarageBand? Could I look at taking a digital tap off the ToneX. The manual appears to have been written by someone whose first language wasn't English and was listening to the instructions through three intermediaries, none of whom spoke a single common language. 

 

My guess is that I need a Mixer and then feed one channel of the mixer to the iPad through iRig and the other channel to the monitor. However if there are better ways of doing this, I'm all ears.

 

Thanks

Rob

[rwillett]

Would something like this

 

https://www.thomann.co.uk/palmer_ybox_guitar_splitter.htm

 

from Thomman do the job?

 

 

I have everything apart from the splitter.

 

Thoughts welcomed

 

Thanks

Rob

[rwillett]

After taking a walk with the dog, I thought about this a bit more and realised that the above diagram doesn't allow the iPad to send the output to anything without doing some more work, so wondered if this was a better solution. The mixer should allow me to take the iPad output AND the rest of the signal into the monitor.

 

[SimonK]

27 minutes ago, rwillett said:

After taking a walk with the dog, I thought about this a bit more and realised that the above diagram doesn't allow the iPad to send the output to anything without doing some more work, so wondered if this was a better solution. The mixer should allow me to take the iPad output AND the rest of the signal into the monitor.

 

 

If you get a mixer with aux channels you don't need the switcher anymore so long as you don't mind running your main bass signal through the mixer preamp.

[MichaelDean]

You could get something like this to act as both the mixer and Audio Interface. A quick Google suggests it will work on an iPad. Then you don't need the switcher or a separate audio interface and less desk space is taken up.
 

https://www.behringer.com/product.html?modelCode=0601-AFS

Edited October 21 by MichaelDean

[Beedster]

12 hours ago, rwillett said:

Hi,

 

I have the music setup below in my office for noodling around upon.

 

I also have a Macbook with Logic Pro on BUT that's pretty much in constant use for paid non-music work. I have 2-3 iPads as well.

 

I very occasionally think that what I'm noodling with sounds quite good and I'd like to record it, much as I'd write notes in a notebook. I know I can't remember everything and wanted to capture it, no doubt crudely, so I can look back on it and perhaps work it up more properly in Logic Pro. Moving the Macbook around is not an option, so I'm trying to work out how to use the iPad. I have GarageBand and am familiar with that, but I'm trying to work out what I need to do here.

 

Should I put a small and cheap mini mixer between the ToneX and the Yamaha speaker? One output goes to the iPad through something like an iRig HD (which I have) to GarageBand? Could I look at taking a digital tap off the ToneX. The manual appears to have been written by someone whose first language wasn't English and was listening to the instructions through three intermediaries, none of whom spoke a single common language. 

 

My guess is that I need a Mixer and then feed one channel of the mixer to the iPad through iRig and the other channel to the monitor. However if there are better ways of doing this, I'm all ears.

 

Thanks

Rob

 

A Basschat member should never criticise another for using too much gear, it of course goes against the whole spirit, but if that's what you use for office noodling, I dread to think what you use for recording or gigging  

[rwillett]

4 minutes ago, Beedster said:

 

A Basschat member should never criticise another for using too much gear, it of course goes against the whole spirit, but if that's what you use for office noodling, I dread to think what you use for recording or gigging  

I thought this was quite a small amount of stuff. I honestly do Just to be clear I don't take any offence whatsoever with your comment.

 

I have the Peterson tuner as I saw it and love the way it worked, not cheap but great. The Mod Dwarf takes the place of any number of pedals. I don't have a single dedicated pedal, though I do sometimes look enviously at some of the stuff people do have. The Mod Dwarf does do amps but I had a chance to get a ToneX pedal quite cheaply so I use that for amps. I look longingly at stuff like a Fender Bassman or even an old original Fender Champion, but if I did that I'd have a lot of amps and I'd use them sparingly. All the iPads and other stuff come along through work and are my equivalent of the tools of the trade. The Yamaha HS7 monitor is to remove the amps (see previous points).

 

However on my bucket list is to play a set somewhere with a full Fender or Marshall stack (or better still two stacks) at full volume

 

I do have a bass amp for playing but it's rarely used.

 

I don't gig as I can't find a band to gig with. I live in the Yorkshire Dales and not seen a band looking for a bassist or guitar player for ages. I'd absolutely love to gig as it would force me to practise more. To find a blues or rock band to gig with would be Xmas come early. T'other half would also love me to gig as it stops me moping around the house. Even my daughters would love me to gig as thats cool. I'm not a fantastic player, but I can hold a rhythm down and I'm solid.

 

I'm trying to do more recording as I am slowly working out some songs. I have no pretensions to becoming a rock star but I do enjoy playing.

 

This is the whole of my home made pedal board Its not wired up as I'm trying to work out the power supply. Please note the space top right just waiting for a mixer or something to drop in.

 

 

All the best

Rob

[Beedster]

43 minutes ago, rwillett said:

I thought this was quite a small amount of stuff. I honestly do

 

My approach to recording a noodle that works out half decently is my iPhone 

[rwillett]

3 minutes ago, Beedster said:

 

My approach to recording a noodle that works out half decently is my iPhone 

You might actually be right.

 

Rob

[SimonK]

49 minutes ago, rwillett said:

I thought this was quite a small amount of stuff. I honestly do Just to be clear I don't take any offence whatsoever with your comment.

 

I have the Peterson tuner as I saw it and love the way it worked, not cheap but great. The Mod Dwarf takes the place of any number of pedals. I don't have a single dedicated pedal, though I do sometimes look enviously at some of the stuff people do have. The Mod Dwarf does do amps but I had a chance to get a ToneX pedal quite cheaply so I use that for amps. I look longingly at stuff like a Fender Bassman or even an old original Fender Champion, but if I did that I'd have a lot of amps and I'd use them sparingly. All the iPads and other stuff come along through work and are my equivalent of the tools of the trade. The Yamaha HS7 monitor is to remove the amps (see previous points).

 

However on my bucket list is to play a set somewhere with a full Fender or Marshall stack (or better still two stacks) at full volume

 

I do have a bass amp for playing but it's rarely used.

 

I don't gig as I can't find a band to gig with. I live in the Yorkshire Dales and not seen a band looking for a bassist or guitar player for ages. I'd absolutely love to gig as it would force me to practise more. To find a blues or rock band to gig with would be Xmas come early. T'other half would also love me to gig as it stops me moping around the house. Even my daughters would love me to gig as thats cool. I'm not a fantastic player, but I can hold a rhythm down and I'm solid.

 

I'm trying to do more recording as I am slowly working out some songs. I have no pretensions to becoming a rock star but I do enjoy playing.

 

This is the whole of my home made pedal board Its not wired up as I'm trying to work out the power supply. Please note the space top right just waiting for a mixer or something to drop in.

 

 

All the best

Rob

 

Looks like one of these would fit into your pedal board and do at least part of what you want!

 

[rwillett]

8 hours ago, SimonK said:

 

If you get a mixer with aux channels you don't need the switcher anymore so long as you don't mind running your main bass signal through the mixer preamp.

7 hours ago, MichaelDean said:

You could get something like this to act as both the mixer and Audio Interface. A quick Google suggests it will work on an iPad. Then you don't need the switcher or a separate audio interface and less desk space is taken up.
 

https://www.behringer.com/product.html?modelCode=0601-AFS

Thanks all, I'll check them out.

Rob

[rwillett]

HI,

 

I've ordered a Tri Parallel Mixer, I printed out the footprint to see if it fits, that's the white block, and it seems to be fine. It has input and outputs on the side so that needs to be taken into account.

 

 

I also printed out some ideas of attaching an iPad to the pedal board. That's the red pole on the left, a left wing pole?, there's a joke in there somewhere I wasn't sure how high I could put the iPad but the wobble and vibration when it's at the top of the pole is too much so I'll print a smaller version with a 5cm pole. I'll probably control the iPad using a Bluetooth foot switch.

[SimonK]

...be interested to hear what you make of the pedal mixer as I've been meaning to get one for years for similar uses as you (although I have never needed to mount anything on my pedalboard so use a Eurodesk at the moment). However the EHX pedal looks to me like a very flexible piece of kit so long as the sound/signal quality is OK. The only thing is can you cope with green in your black and red colour scheme!?

[rwillett]

Damm, I hadn't thought of the colour scheme.

 

I'll check with my Feng Shui guru, she's on speed dial, and see if I need to move the house walls or something, perhaps put a candle on the 3rd and 6th stairs to accommodate this.  If need be, I'll cancel the order, black, red and green together is a bit dodgy as you say.

 

Appreciate you bringing this to my attention.

 

Rob

 

[SimonK]

15 minutes ago, rwillett said:

Damm, I hadn't thought of the colour scheme.

 

I'll check with my Feng Shui guru, she's on speed dial, and see if I need to move the house walls or something, perhaps put a candle on the 3rd and 6th stairs to accommodate this.  If need be, I'll cancel the order, black, red and green together is a bit dodgy as you say.

 

Appreciate you bringing this to my attention.

 

Rob

 

 

...I saw on the other thread that you 3D printed the pedal board, so maybe you could make another matching it to the green?

[rwillett]

3 minutes ago, SimonK said:

 

...I saw on the other thread that you 3D printed the pedal board, so maybe you could make another matching it to the green?

I'm pretty certain that I have never printed anything in green. White - Loads, Red- Loads,  Black - Loads, Orange - a small amount, mainly because Prusa Orange is 2-3x the price of other filaments, Blue - a Little.

 

I do have a roll each of light blue and yellow filament under the desk, but thankfully no green. Not a colour that anybody has ever asked me to use. The blue and yellow were going to be for Ukrainian flag project that somebody asked for and decided not to go ahead with.

 

Rob

[SimonK]

FYI just seen the following thread - talk about buses (is there an audio joke here?) coming along two at a time!

 

Edited October 25 by SimonK

[rwillett]

Thats useful to know. Thx. Should turn up Mon or Tues next week along with the Cioks.

[rwillett]

On 24/10/2024 at 10:24, SimonK said:

...be interested to hear what you make of the pedal mixer as I've been meaning to get one for years for similar uses as you (although I have never needed to mount anything on my pedalboard so use a Eurodesk at the moment). However the EHX pedal looks to me like a very flexible piece of kit so long as the sound/signal quality is OK. The only thing is can you cope with green in your black and red colour scheme!?

@SimonK

 

The Tri Mixer pedal turned up on Tuesday and I managed to open the box yesterday during a very long and boring MS-Teams call and hook it up. I like it, I like it a lot.  Its very quiet, its very easy and it fits. Don;t like the green and my Feng Shui sensai has had to lie down in a faint after seeing it. I have to sell the house now to counter the green colour, but its worth it.

 

My original intention was to have the pedal at the end of the chain of effects and feed it into an iPad to record with. After using it for a whole two hours, that's gone out of the window (well not so much gone, but a better idea has come in).

 

 

I can now mix different wet amounts of the pedals or have a completely clean signal through to the amp. Use the foot switches on the mixer to bring in the various effects (or not).

 

Need to wire it all up today, but got a few meetings to listen into so that's no problem.

 

The next steps are to work out how to do a midi controller for all of this, so I press one button and it sets up all of the Mod Dwarf and ToneX and iPad up. That needs some thinking about.

 

Thanks for the help

Rob

 

[SimonK]

14 minutes ago, rwillett said:

@SimonK

 

The Tri Mixer pedal turned up on Tuesday and I managed to open the box yesterday during a very long and boring MS-Teams call and hook it up. I like it, I like it a lot.  Its very quiet, its very easy and it fits. Don;t like the green and my Feng Shui sensai has had to lie down in a faint after seeing it. I have to sell the house now to counter the green colour, but its worth it.

 

My original intention was to have the pedal at the end of the chain of effects and feed it into an iPad to record with. After using it for a whole two hours, that's gone out of the window (well not so much gone, but a better idea has come in).

 

 

I can now mix different wet amounts of the pedals or have a completely clean signal through to the amp. Use the foot switches on the mixer to bring in the various effects (or not).

 

Need to wire it all up today, but got a few meetings to listen into so that's no problem.

 

The next steps are to work out how to do a midi controller for all of this, so I press one button and it sets up all of the Mod Dwarf and ToneX and iPad up. That needs some thinking about.

 

Thanks for the help

Rob

 

 

That's awesome - sounds like you can get away without the camera on in your meetings - and the midi idea sounds interesting.

 

RE the colours, sounds like you need to find some green for you printer, then it will look fine (and you could sell me your red one!).

[rwillett]

1 hour ago, SimonK said:

 

That's awesome - sounds like you can get away without the camera on in your meetings - and the midi idea sounds interesting.

 

RE the colours, sounds like you need to find some green for you printer, then it will look fine (and you could sell me your red one!).

 

@SimonK

 

Some of my release meetings have 20-40 people in as all need to be updated, so very few people put their cameras on.  Some people have very low bandwidth so video is a problem,

 

I've not ever done anything with MIDI so will read up about what can be done and how first.

 

I am not printing any green whatsoever However if you are interested in the pedalboard DM me.

 

Thanks

Rob

[SimonK]

I just pulled the triger on the EHX mixer pedal as a Christmas present for myself. My aim is to use it for switching in and out different preamp pedals including the preamp on my Agi & TE heads via the inputs & efx sends. I really like mixing and matching preamps, and this pedal seems perfectly suited to it!

 

@rwillett how's your pedal board working?

[rwillett]

Hi Simon

 

The pedalboard works well. I had to put a couple of risers at the back to elevate the ToneX and the Mod Dwarf by 25mm. Dead easy to do. I used the risers to route power cables through as well, so that removed some of the wiring away and kept it neat and tidy, two words never normally associated with me.

 

The Cioks PSU is underneath and the mains cable comes in from the side. Its quite a neat and tidy system. The 1/4" cables don't fit through the risers as they have a 90 degree bend.

 

 

I may redesign some of the end support rails to be a little lighter and quicker to print, and also to raise the back pedal row up and sell them to order. The support printing is not my design, so I can't and won't sell them. However I think I can make them a lot better, a lot stronger and a lot easier to print through sensible design. The printing is rather Russian tank in nature, works but a more modern design will be a lot better.

 

It's really neat being able to design the board to fit the pedals as opposed to the other way around.

 

Rob

[SimonK]

5 hours ago, rwillett said:

It's really neat being able to design the board to fit the pedals as opposed to the other way around.

 

 

That is really cool, although my pedalboards seem to change week by week so I would have a 3D printer going full time!

 

Do you find the printed larger buttons make any difference? I've always avoided them as I feel they make it more likely that I hit the wrong pedal.

[rwillett]

Do you change the size of the pedal boards or the contents? I have more or less settled on my pedalboard. I wanted to keep it simple so just had the mod dwarf at first. I then had the chance of a new ToneX for about £100 so added that. The tuner just made things easy and the EHX mixer was to bring a bit of order into chaos. 

 

I chose the rail length size to fit the pedals and have forced myself to stick to it though I do note there is a large gap on the front that something expensive might fit in 😊

 

Once I did the sides that was it. I could change the length of the rails so I coild fit more pedals in.  I could also split board in half and have two pedal boards. Theres no extra printing needed as its designed to do that anyway. 

 

The pedal toppers work for me as I play solo in my home office and am often in bare feet. I don't find I hit the other pedal tops as I can make the tops any diameter I like. So some are a little smaller as the foot switches are closer together. As I design and print them, I can easily make them whatever size I wish. Make you a couple of you want.