G2M Octave jumps with a fretless bass

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krisbg
Posts: 3
Joined: Thu Jan 16, 2020 9:06 am

G2M Octave jumps with a fretless bass

Post by krisbg »

Hello,

Recently I bought a G2M v.3 and tried playing with my fretless bass, but I get very frequent octave errors where it plays around one of every three notes one octave lower. Is there a remediation to this? Also it doesn't produce any sound through the most part of the high C-string I have on the bass.

My bass is Ibanez SRH505F - 5-string fretless, with a piezzo pick-up. I tuned it with a high C string (EADGC), a custom nut built for that tuning. Raised action enough to reduce buzz. I am playing close to the neck, have reduced the high frequencies with the tone knob to its minimum, I do use a floating-thumb muting technique to reduce string resonance, the volume is set correctly to be loud enough, without overloading. Still the octave jumps are there though. I tried different G2M settings - for 4, and 5-string bass, and also for guitar - still the same. Which of these settings should be best for my case of a 5-stringer with a high C-string (I guess it should be 4-string bass setting)? Also, no matter of which setting I choose, the high C-string plays only on its lowest 3-4 semitones, and on the rest it doesn't produce anything like it has been deliberately forced to not play there, while this is exactly where I would like to use the G2M with the bass most.
Spaghettaboutit
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon Mar 09, 2020 12:29 pm

Re: G2M Octave jumps with a fretless bass

Post by Spaghettaboutit »

I could be wrong, but if you want to mainly use the high C-string, then I'd suggest that you put the G2M into the default guitar mode. I think it'll handle the higher frequencies better. There might be an upper range limit that the bass modes might have, which is what you are noticing on the C-string. Mind you on normal guitar mode the low e-string will be a bit finicky.

I know that my reply is about 4 weeks behind, but I'm curious if my advice helps or if you were able to sort it out yourself. -Ben

EDIT:

Since you are using a piezo pickup, I'm wondering if #1 the signal that he G2M is getting is strong enough or #2 that the piezo pickup is picking up too much extra noise that it's making it too hard for the G2M to track.

Here are a few ideas:

Make sure to watch the CLIP LED on the G2M, you want to make sure your signal is loud enough that the LED only sometimes flashes, but not constantly be on.

Place a compressor between your bass and the G2M, this might help to bring up any quieter notes, and bring down any unwanted "unpitched" noise that a piezo would amplify. If you don't already have a compressor, I'd strongly suggest you get one, I feel like they are an essential bass player pedal.

If you have access to a high gain pedal (distortion or fuzz) or amp - throw your bass directly through that to see if the high gain distortion can point out to you any unwanted noise that the G2M might be seeing. This is based on the idea that typically our brain will tune out the background noise like fretboard buzz or string squeaks, in favor of the pitched note that we are playing. The G2M doesn't get the luxury of being able to filter out all of that noise all that easily. So checking for weird (unwanted) harmonics by cranking your bass through high gain will help check for that sort of thing....obviously only play through the amp as you would normal do on G2M - no need to go harder or softer just because you are using high gain, as that won't give you an accurate idea of what the G2M is going to see.
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