PV had a midi bass back in the 1990s which I used to record my new age album Gina Balducci’s Waterbase this is not new tech but I am so glad to see this coming back to life.
Ive been playing Roland Gr 20 & Gr 55 action 2slow always miss n what I play finally a game changer " expensive 4 kats not playing 4a living but I've gotta get 1 2thump way high thank u Vic
According to their website - frettrax.com they charge $1800 to customise an existing bass, or $2800 to have this tech in the 4-string Rybski basses which they provide. I presume there would also be shipping cost on top of this.
Beat me to the punch. I always wanted to build a midi bass. I'd run Trillian bass software though. Turn my bass into a fretless, Moog or acoustic upright amongst other things. Or Gospel Musicians BASSilicious.
I've seen wired fret technology before with Industrial Radio. The only difference here is that Fretrax will install the technology in one of your bases whereas industrial radio you have to buy their bass.
It's amazing. But it's only for activating notes on the fretboard with fixed velocity. As Vic says, it's contact. The right hand playing is not doing anything, so you don't "play". But cool for putting some pads etc.
Reminds me of similar systems by industrialradio.com.au in Australia & the Expressiv Midi Bass by rorguitars.com in Ireland. Both with super long ques to get anything done. ;-/
The Peavey Midi-Base came out in 1993 IIRC, Then the Cyber-Bass, Synthaxe etc. Not new technology at all.. 25 years old to be exact.. The electronics are now smaller, The Midi-Base was full of green boards with dozens of IC chips, It also had each fret cut into four pieces to keep each note from shorting out on the next string & also needed the frets to be polished to make 100% contact on the strings, Also I would imagine that coated DR strings would not make contact, I note VWs bass has a brass nut which would also conduct??.. I had a look at FretTrax's website & the don't give any info on exactly how the unit works.. Also I'd guess that each fret has a separate wire or four like the Midi-Base which had 21 frets x 4 = 84 wires to the frets, Don't unbolt it's neck.. I guess there's a flat ribbon cable in there? I wanna know more about this NEW technology..
Headknocker in this day now nothing is new buy it's way more advanced. Of course midi isn't new. Have been many midi contraptions over the years for guitars but none where you could trigger a different parameter from each fret.
