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Gary Phillips

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About Gary Phillips

  • Birthday 11/30/1999

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  1. This is an idea for an experiment. I have a couple of gk pickups, one on a Les Paul, a Graphtec Hex pickup on an Italia and now this Fishman Connect that I'm installing on a project that involves an old Kay Demon body and a Tele neck. I've built several electric guitars from scratch over the years - I'm 63 - as well as hacked together a lot of electronics. (empasis on hacked) I still have a Phitec Photon system that really isn't worth the shipping costs to sell - though I always wanted to put it on a nylon solid body strung with all high B's - but that's another story. Back to the Kay Demon body - thin plywood hollowbody. I'm putting a bend and mod wheel from a chopped up MIDI keyboard into it. The little keyboard, a Midiplus Classic 25, is perfect for this as it can run on batteries or USB power and has MIDI DIN output - and it's components are on separate little PCB's strung together with ribbons, so it will be relatively easy to fit into the Demon body the parts I want. Add to this a Kenton USB MIDI box for the Fishman Connect and a place to slide either a MIDI Solutions merge box or Breath Controller box - and a battery brick with dual USB power outs - and I"m set. I need the merge box to blend the pitch/mod and other controllers from the keyboard guts with the output of the Kenton - which is fed the Fishman Connect to turn it's USB to MIDI DIN. Craig, I know it might seem like a bunch of trouble for some folks but... as someone who wrote books on electronics projects for musicians and hundreds of articles for magazines I kept in stacks for way too long.... I know you can appreciate it. Oh yeah, and I'll also slap a humbucker on this guitar so I can use it with MG2 - particularly since I have done a successful test with iMG2 as well as with the Tripleplay in merging breath control and my controller based pitch bend. And note: This gives me a guitar with MDI DIN output built into the guitar - no computer required - unless I use it with MG2. Seems the only other alternative is a button neck like what Starr Labs makes - and I love the technology there, but my main gripe is the lack of similarity with an actual guitar fretboard, principally, the uniform fret spacing. Back to your question... for the split pickup experiment, I am planning to use an old WP-20G (one of those first double pedal GK effect boxes) and tap the GK connector for the string outputs. I figured by combining the 6 strings into 2 groups of 3, I could get by with a simple stereo amp to buffer the two lines before they go to a standard 2 input USB audio interface and then into the 2 instances of MG2. BUT. Is it worth the trouble? First I'm going to finish the above project with the Speed Demon....now to get to work like a speed demon. Yeah... clean up is a drag. You don't hear the trash live generally, but when you go back to replace the voice - which is a big reason we are using MIDI besides the editing - it's cleanup city. I got away from Digital Performer and became an Ableton Live devotee, but I may have to upgrade my DP license becuase it sure had the best of the best MIDI editing features... IMHO. Maybe... what we are missing here is a way to optimize the guitar signal better that works in tandem with MG2's pitch detection. My split pickup or hex idea is kinda going backwards in some respects... but it makes sense that you complicate things with polyphony. I almost bought a Beetle Quantar when they first came out... I heard they were buggy... but I could swear they were onto something. Cheers ! - Gary
  2. Here's a way to get excellent fast tracking with MG2 utilizing 2 instances of MG2 as long as the guitar sound is muted - unless you desire the "Nashville tuning" sound. Note: string gauges are approximate and personal preference. Lower 3 strings (bass side) tuned an octave higher and output together using hex pickup tap or stereo pickup. E .025 A .016 D .012 Send into one instance of MG2 with transpose set to -12. Higher 3 strings tuned standard and output together using hex pickup tap or stereo pickup. G .018 B .014 E .011 Send into 2nd instance of MG2 with transpose set to 0 (no transpose).
  3. Much easier to do with a Roland GK pickup. There are lots of schematics that show which pins/wires of the cable represent the individual string outputs. All that is necessary is to power the pickup from a standard GK connected synth device (there are old GK compatible effect modules on Ebay) or configure a power supply from the available shematics. The GK pickup needs some DC to power discreet amps that buffer the hex output. Then run the string outs into a USB audio interface that can handle at least 6 inputs at a time. Then run 6 instances of MIDI Guitar 2 in your DAW and distribute the string output there. The only real reason I'd do this experiment - and I could because I already have all the necessary gizmos - is so I could string a guitar with all high B strings (tuned to B) and use transpose on the individual strings to set the correct MIDI note/pitch value. Of course Jam Origin MIDI Guitar 2 and Tripleplay Connect are already pretty darn good, particularly with monophonic lines, which is what I mostly use both for. If you want to max out the Tripleplay Connect for optimum tracking, you can use all high B strings tuned as such, set the output to mono mode so that each string is sent on a different MIDI channel and then use your DAW to transpose each string - or a MIDI Solutions Event Processor if you want to do it without a computer. (using a USB MIDI host, of course) In Tripleplay mono mode, transpose is set globally. As far as improving on MIDI Guitar 2, I'm in the process of mounting a pitch bend and mod wheel* onto a guitar dedicated to MIDI. By keeping bending disabled in MG2, you end up with much faster tracking and less glitches, IMHO. It might also improve tracking to use thin slinky strings and tune up a minor 3rd. (G-C-F-A#/Bb-D-G) and transpose down the MIDI in MG2's settings. *I'm gutting a cheap 24 note controller that I discovered has it's guts on separate small PCB cards that I can tuck inside a salvaged thin hollowbody. I'm putting a Kenton USB host inside as well so I can plug my Fishman Connect into it and get a MIDI DIN line that I can merge with the Bend & Mod and have a single MIDI DIN output for plugging into hardware. What turned me off about the Studio MIDI Guitar - besides the lack of documentation and fishy video demos - was the lack of MIDI bend and mod controllers on board and instead, relying on computationally intensive analog interpretation. (say that 10 times fast) Cheers!
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