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Iconoclast

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Posts posted by Iconoclast

  1. I currently have one for sale on Reverb bundled with all the accessories (Mixface/triple pedal/shelves).


    I bought it because at the time I was gigging with a kid who did a lot of smaller gigs/shorter gigs and it was super easy to schlep and setup and didn't take up a ton of space. He was doing original music and that means doing a lot of on/off stage in a hurry kinda gigs.  It excelled for that.

    Mixface is a great product and works like a champ within the Studio Logic ecosystem. I even used it quite effectively as drawbars and changed on the fly with it all the time.  Mixface has more control than you'll ever need.  It is essentially 2 "pages" of mapped controls and I kept page 2 completely mapped to organ controls so it acted essentially as an organ module with full control of all up front organ controls. Then page 1 of the Mixface was a mixer for my VST's or whatever I needed for the current patch.

    The magnetic aspect of the Mixface and the computer shelf are brilliant and work just like advertised.  Mixface is pretty small and you can get another board right up against it.  But Mixface doesn't need to be attached to the SL88, you can put it anywhere convenient in your setup. I'll try to attach some pictures that show various setups that I attempted...and for a while I was really trying everything I could.

    I struggled with VST pianos until I got the velocity curves right and then I really liked it.  The TP40W is IMO much better than the TP100 that Arturia uses. I've used both. TP40W is kind of a heavy action but once you get the curves right it can be very expressive.

    In the end, I have a Nord rig that made it kind of redundant so I haven't been using it lately so I put it up for sale.

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  2. Went to the single Sam Ash in Glendale (Phoenix AZ) yesterday.

    Things are not really discounted at all. In fact many things were quite a bit more than the advertised prices I was easily able to find at GC or SweetH2O.

    The employees felt blindsided; they thought their store was going to survive. Supposedly will be open for another 6ish weeks.

    But if they don't drastically slash prices, they're certainly not going to move any thing they weren't moving before.

     

  3. Bummer because at times they seem like really talented musicians...that just can't afford to really flesh out the stage to reproduce their music.

    I get that the economics of music probably don't support the cast and rehearsals it would take to do those arrangements live.

  4. So I listened to the music and dug it. They got a thing.

    Then I watched some live performances and found them to be not that interesting...for the same reason that I find a lot of EDM not that interesting.  It might be fun to be in the crowd for the party, but what's going on onstage is just really not that compelling other than blistering laser and light shows.  So like, this daytime show at red rocks was missing some of the pyrotechnics and loses something.

    The music will make it into some of my playlists, but I'm not dieing to go to one of their shows.
     

     

  5.  

    On 4/23/2024 at 12:28 PM, Macsaint777 said:

    I don't have that many boards anymore, so not an issue for me.. but I'd just use adapters if I needed to. 

     

    I sold my Ui24 and bought this and don't regret it at all. Ui24 can be buggy and just disappears from the iPad/Mac/iPhone at random... but I really like having the built in screen here, as well as iPad control. Sounds better too actually. 

    I use a Ui24 as my Studio Mixer. Great for that purpose as the wifi never has to cover a great distance or deal with the co-channel interference of 100 cellphones.  I absolutely love their pre-amps and the software...when the wifi doesn't drop out!

    If I was to use it at a deployable stage mixer I'd try a different wifi though. The built in one is just not dependable enough for a show covering any range or dealing with co-channel interference.

  6. 42 minutes ago, ProfD said:

    Rick Beato is going to become a millionaire if he isn't already.🤣😎

    I don't know how much he makes but I read in a Wall Street Journal article that for his age and the age group he attracts to his content, he's one of the highest viewed youtubers/influencers channels. Very rare for his age group AND the demographic that they're selling ads for.

    I don't get all the hate? I seriously thought everyone kinda liked this guy. There is relentless pressure to produce content in his world so I'll allow him a couple misses. He's had some episodes that I thought were really great and his interviews of some famous guys are well done IMHO.

    Everyone is allowed to rant now and again, and in fact I'd say that a couple posts in this thread would qualify as proto-rants.

    • Like 4
    • Dislike 1
  7. I've sold on SweetH20 GX and I think it's a great way to buy and sell gear. A bit of a smoother experience than Reverb.

    My only problem with GX is the market is SO much smaller than Reverb. There's just not near enough available. And I wish they had the pricing guide that Reverb has.

    But shipping and everything else was a bit smoother on GX than reverb.  FedEx is an easier shipping experience than UPS and GX gets you a discount and you can print the shipping label at home.

    I will not hesitate to use them again.

    • Like 1
  8. Others have said this but I'll ad my vote:

    If you already have a Mac and are somewhat familiar with how a DAW works, Mainstage is just too cheap and easy not to be your starting point.  Synthwise, you can cover almost anything to 95% accuracy with what is already in there.  The organ is really good. The electric pianos are maybe not hi fidelity to the originals, but I find they're very useful in a live situation. The only thing I don't like in Mainstage are the acoustic piano, and for that I use Keyscape, although there's many cheaper alternatives for Pianos.

    It can be resource heavy, but through the use of alias patches and channel strips you can really cut down on the number of same instances you have running.

    Also...Space Designer. It's a fantastic reverb and for some reason it's in a lot of the standard patches in Mainstage. Minimize it's use! Other reverbs are indistinguishable in a live situation and use way less resources.

    If you have one of the new Apple silicon computers, they seem to be able to run ridiculous amounts of stuff simultaneously.

  9. The biggest problem I've seen, already described, is that they do a good job of separating out drums, bass, and vox, and pretty much put everything else in the same track. So getting a separate keyboard track is near impossible.

    What I like about Moises is it also has loop/key change/speed change so, even though the mechanization of it isn't stellar, it's a great rehearsal tool, especially if you're a guitar player.

    But if anyone finds one that can split out the guitar and keyboards with any clarity just let us know that!

    • Like 1
  10. It's in the OP. Elmwood Modena.

    The complication was that the amp takes two separate input relays, one is TS and one is TRS.  I learned from another owner that the TS controls controls the channel 1/2 switch, I think the tip of the TRS is boost on/off, and the sleeve is MV 1/2.

    So a simple amp switch like the one above wouldn't be able to control all functions. Fortunately the dudes at Boss build their relay switches like puzzle pieces so you can slide them together to form a single piece.

    • Like 1
  11. Hmmm, are you sure that's the same as sending a relay channel switch?  Or can you fool the amp into thinking it's a relay?  Because if you can, you're right, there's a lot of products that will do that.  If not, then there's not that many that expressly send relay switch info.

  12. I've really learned up on this and there's actually several solutions depending on how integrated you want to be.

    The "easy peasy" wasn't as easy as I thought but I finally found what I think would be the most elegant cheap solution. Requires a 9v to light the lights I think. I haven't actually tried this yet because the amp is getting re-tubed at the moment.  These switches have modular edges to fit together. The dual footswitch has a TRS jack with selectable polarities.

     

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    Another solution, if you use any kind of midi controller in your rig, is this product by Voodoo labs that takes midi signals and turns them into TS relays. For my purposes I'd need to use 3 of the jacks and then join 2 of them with an adapter, a solution that I don't love.
    https://voodoolab.com/product/control-switcher/


    Another option would be the Morningstar MC6 PRO.  New, they're pretty pricey at around $500 but they're on Reverb for less than $400.  They're super programmable and can control a whole lot of things and even have a lot of keyboard applications. The PRO version includes two mini TRS jacks that can be programmed as relay switches.  https://www.morningstar.io/mc6-pro


    A really elegant, but slightly expensive solution is just use a Line6 HX FX as your pedalboard. It has 2 TRS jacks that can be set as relay switches that can change with either patch changes or snapshot changes, so it completely integrates your amplifier into your board. Additionally with two effects loops available, it's extremely versatile.  Right now they're $499 brand new, which isn't cheap but you get an unreal amount of capability.  This youtube shows a guy using one to change a two channel amp, but the principle would certainly apply to an amp with more capability.

     

    Two weeks ago I had no idea how to solve this problem but now I got a lot of info on how to fix this baby.  I'm actually leaning towards getting an HX FX just because of all the other capability you get with it.  But in the meantime I'll probably just piece together some Boss footswitches and see if that will work.

     

     

  13. Posted in this forum because this is where the MIDI genius's hang out.

    This is a tech issue with a guitar amp, but since it involves MIDI...it's wasted on most guitar players.

    I bought a used amplifier from an out of business manufacturer that is missing the original footswitch. 

    The original footswitch controlled 3 two state switches:

    1. Channel 1/2

    2. Preamp distortion Boost on/off

    3. Volume 1/2 (amp has 2 master volumes so you can pre-set a lead volume)

    The cable that connects the footswitch to the amp splits into 2 1/4 inch jacks.  1 is TS and 1 is TRS and they plug into the back of the amp.

     

    According to the amp documentation "The foot switch jack sockets can also be operated from a Patch bay/ MIDI switcher.This allows all the foot switchfunctions to be managed by a MIDI operated unit."

    I have no idea what piece of hardware they could be talking about. Anyone able to help or point me to the box/footswitch that would be midi programable that would output to 2 different 1/4 inch jacks, one of which would be a TS and the other TRS?

    I'm pretty MIDI literate when it comes to keyboard issues, but in this regime I'm clueless.

  14. I would have to agree that in terms of just sound, that my soft synths are getting indistinguishable from the real thing.

    However, the one thing I can't get away from is the single knob per function immediacy of an instrument.  That doesn't mean it has to be analog, I  have as much fun on my Hydrasynth as anything.

    If I know the sound I'm going for, I can frequently get there quicker and better with a VST. But if I'm just experimenting, I seem to get to great places I didn't expect to be by just turning knobs.

    Every time that I touch a mouse I feel like some of the magic just got sucked away. 

  15. Just got back in town and tried it again with different cables and it appears that it's the cable length and perhaps cable type that it's sensitive to.  I was able to bypass the USB 2.0 hub with a shorter (and much older beat up looking) cord and even use it through a small USB-A to USB-C dongle, and it seems to be working fine now.

    The USB spec is 5 meters, and the cord I was using is 15 feet long, which is about a foot shorter than the spec. I have two of them that I use for some other longer runs in my studio and while they both work fine for those purposes, neither will function with the KL on either of my studio computers (MBP and the MacStudio). 

     

    FWIW, I have used even longer cords for some purposes and never had a problem, even recording audio.

    So it doesn't appear to be an issue with not being backwards compatible, but more that the KL is just very sensitive to cable length? Or maybe that it just doesn't like this brand of USB cable, I don't know. But it's definitely the cable.

  16. I really doubt that's the most effective way to address the problem. Any recently made Apple computer or even iPad should be able to run many instances of those with no problem.

    Most of those instruments haven't been updated in eons and I think I was running them just fine on my laptop 3-4 iterations ago when I first started using Mainstage in maybe 2010.   I think even Retro Synth is essentially 20 years old? Released in 2004 I think? With Logic 7.  So... more complex than Pong, but certainly not the V-collection.

    My advice is to looks somewhere else to free up memory.

  17. 11 hours ago, Sergievsky said:

    I had a problem also but it was that the audio suddenly stopped, even though it showed the KL usb audio still connected and software was still running through it, just no audio coming out. It didn’t happen right away, worked for awhile, then suddenly no more audio. Hard to recreate, as it was after awhile during rehearsal, and also happened before after a bit of time as well, so not sure I can call tech support as it would probably be working throughout my call. Anyway, just wondering if someone else had a similar problem. I’ll also try several different hubs and cables and see if it’ll work. Otherwise great unit, but unless I get this figured out can’t rely on the usb part of it.

    This sounds similar to how my problem presented itself sometimes. Maybe try a shorter USB? Maybe run it through a different USB connection or a USB hub?

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