Edirol SD-20 Octave Moving ?

[proxy]

Hi folks-

 

Please bear with me. My wife is a vocalist and keyboard player. She's also Japanes, with limited English skills, and technology challanged. I know just enough about 'puters to be dangerous and have no understanding of the jargon used in electronic music instrument manuals.

 

Here's the situation: She plays bass live using a Roland AX-1 and an Alesis Nanobass, of which she has two. The CPUs in the Nanobass' are dying, and there's no fixing them. Unfortunately there is nothing similar on the market, so she's trying the SD-20. She likes the tones, but needs to shift the keyboard down one octave as she is forced to play at the top of it. She was able to do this with the Nano. We just got the SD-20 and I've had no luck getting help from Edirol yet. They've insulated themselves rather well. I haven't tried using the software yet as I want to be able to return the unit in case what she wants to do is impossible.

 

I'm hoping there's some kind soul here that may shed some light, or point me in the right direction. Just knowing that it's feasible will help. She heads for Japan in a month and is getting a bit anxious.

 

Thanks for you consideration.

[zeronyne]

Hi Proxy, welcome to the forum,

 

I have a question for you. Are you saying that even when hitting the "octave down" button on the AX-1 twice, it's still not low enough for her to play comfortably?

 

The SD-20 is a GM (General MIDI) device, and I've sure the software (from what I could see from the screenshot) will allow you to drop the oscillators by an octave, but my fear would be that you'd need to use a computer to "re-edit" that bass patch each time you turned the unit on, since the specs do not seem to report any sort of RAM.

 

Is there a reason why you chose this particular model? If you like the sounds, but want something a bit more flexible and standalone, I'd recommend one of the Soundcanvases by Roland or, better yet, the JV1010 or XV2020. Or, you could look to Ebay for a Nanobass. I still use mine every day. Presently, there are 4 on Ebay, each going for under $100.00.

 

Good luck, and let us know what you decided to do.