Bryan’s MIDI-based ’board.
For guitarists, MIDI was a bit of a useless concept—something the synth player in your band endlessly yammered about while you plugged in your amp and pedalboard and set up for the gig. Well, tighten up your belts, the Dojo is now open.
The Paradigm Changes
Developed by a consortium of musical heavyweights, including MIDI’s progenitor Dave Smith (Sequential Circuits), Ikutaro Kakehashi (Roland Corporation), and engineer Tom Oberheim, MIDI enables synths and drum machines from various makers to “talk” to one another using a standardized “language” over a 5-pin cable. The original MIDI instruments included Roland’s TR909 and Jupiter-6, and Smith’s own Prophet 600. Today, MIDI can be carried over USB, 3.5 mm, and 1/4" TRS cables, as well as Bluetooth. It’s also something that more and more pedal makers are taking advantage of en masse. Many months ago with the help of my friends at XAct Tone Solutions here in Nashville, I finally wired up a MIDI-based pedalboard (Photo 1). Why would I ever go down this rabbit hole?
“Until very recently, guitar-oriented manufacturers never took advantage or expanded on MIDI possibilities.”
For several huge reasons: It gives me greater control over all of a given pedal’s obvious (and hidden) parameters that I can adjust simultaneously using expression pedal(s); the ability to toggle, latch, or tap tempo for many pedals at once; to create, save, and adjust wildly divergent preset parameters on the fly (using CC and PC messages); and organize song lists and set lists, for starters.
While this is possible with multi-effects pedals from Line 6, Fender, Neural DSP, Boss, Kemper, etc., I often find that I don’t like all the sounds bundled within these units. I may not like certain types of amp models, overdrives, choruses, reverbs, fuzz, and delay offerings from one maker, and prefer the algorithms of another brand entirely. With more and more pedal manufacturers embracing MIDI, we’re much closer to a “having our cake and eating it too” scenario.
I can further use my MIDI-enabled pedals with instruments beyond keyboards, drum machines, samplers, and other MIDI controllers (this may be the subject of a future Dojo). But for now, I want to get your creativity fully charged, and take you down another rabbit hole I stumbled into!
Becoming a Convert
Let me give you one of my new favorite “effects” I’ve been exploring. This involves using any plugin or software that will convert audio to MIDI. Certain DAWs (Ableton, Pro Tools, etc.) already have the ability to convert an audio file to MIDI. If your DAW does not, you can use Melodyne and pitch-based plugins, or free ones specifically made for this like NeuralNote or Basic Pitch, which were developed by Spotify.
Try This
Now let’s “break” the plugin. Either use a prerecorded audio track (guitars, vocals, bass, keys, or even ambient field recordings), or grab your guitar and record something with all the effects you would normally use. Delays are particularly fun to have here since they repeat pitches already played! Now convert this audio track to MIDI. In Pro Tools, right-click on the audio file and select “Copy Audio as MIDI.” I tried this using a fuzzed-out solo I played on a recent record I produced.
Next, create an instrument track and instantiate a soft synth of your choice (I’ve used Arturia’s Jup-8 with one of my tweaked presets). Now paste (Cmd or Ctrl+V) the MIDI-ized audio onto the instrument track. Based on your sensitivity settings, you should have all kinds of crazy extraneous notes in various octaves.
From here, solo the instrument track with your new MIDI, and let your imagination loose! Pay attention to the parts of your original audio track that were accurately “preserved” and what parts were not. You can now play with velocity, duration, quantization, and transposition for any and all notes. For example, I chose to isolate notes that were originally part of the delay and then adjusted them to match the underlying implied chords I soloed over—thus turning my guitar’s delay into a MIDI chord accompaniment for my solo!
I hope you canceled your dinner plans. Blessings, and until next time, Namaste.
Supported by Focusrite
Photo courtesy of singlecoil.com
First, let’s discuss polarity. In short, we can define the polarity of a pickup as the direction—north or south—of the magnetic field.
It’s important to consider polarity when attempting to combine pickups and achieve a hum-canceling effect. You’ve probably seen RWRP—reverse wind, reverse polarity—in a pickup description, especially when looking for Strat middle pickups. Hum canceling is only achieved when both pickups have opposite phase and opposite polarity—so, one pickup needs to have north and the other south polarity.
Humbucker pickups also work on this principle. Both coils have opposite phase and polarity, so when you combine them in series or in parallel, it will be free of hum. (The fun really starts when you start considering coil-splitting options, but that’s for another time.)
What happens if you combine mismatched pickups? You’ll receive hum or out-of-phase tones, and, in the worst possible scenario, both at once. As a guideline: If you want two pickups to be in phase, both the polarity and the wind direction have to be either identical or opposite. In other words, two pickups with the same wind and polarity will be in phase, and so will two pickups that have opposite polarity and wind. If the two pickups have the same wind but different polarity, or the same polarity but different wind, they will be out of phase with each other.
“What happens if you combine mismatched pickups? You’ll receive hum or out-of-phase tones, and, in the worst possible scenario, both at once.”
Since many pickup manufacturers do not mention the polarity in their pickup descriptions, here are some simple ways to figure it out on your own. (This can be a real problem because you need the pickups on your table to test them. If you need to know about polarity before ordering a new pickup, there is no way around contacting the manufacturer and asking for it.)
Use a pickup polarity tester. There are several polarity testing devices on the market that are specifically made for pickups. They are usually not very expensive and are a must-have tool for every guitar tinkerer. The most common one is made by Schatten Design Canada, which is very easy to use. It’s a see-through tube with a magnet inside, you simply move it on the magnet you want to test and receive a clear reading if it is north or south.
Photo courtesy of singlecoil.com
Using a compass. If you have an analog compass, you can use it as a polarity tester for pickups. When using a compass, the needle will always point toward the north magnetic pole. So, if your pickup has a polarity of north, it will point toward the pickup, and if it’s south, it will point away.
Photo courtesy of singlecoil.com
Using an analog meter. In the ’60s, it was common that analog meters had a built-in polarity test. Most of these vintage meters are sought-after items today and fetch high prices. We have a Philips meter from the late ’60s in the shop. If you have one, here is how to use it to determine polarity: Connect the pickup wires to the meter: connect the white one as the + and the black one as the –. Use a heavy screwdriver or a piece of steel and move a piece of steel quickly towards the magnets of the pickup without touching them. (A regular string doesn’t have enough mass for this.) When the polarity meter (the small rectangular display on the right bottom of the main display marked in red) shows +, this is defined as north, while – means south.
Now, let’s take a look at phase. We can define the electrical phase of a pickup as the direction of its winding, which can be clockwise or counter-clockwise. But it’s not all that easy.
You can determine the direction of a pickup’s winding by how it is wound when looking at it from above, with the pickup facing up toward you. I think this definition comes from the early Fender years, and the factory never changed this terminology, winding all pickups for several decades in a clockwise way. For a long time, reverse-wound middle pickups had a clockwise winding, and to change the phase they simply interchanged the two pickup leads. From an electrical point of view, this is all okay. But there are two good reasons to make reverse-wound pickups in a counter-clockwise direction:
Many players believe that a counter-clockwise wound pickup sounds different or better than a clockwise-wound one with reversed leads. And if a string contacts the pickup’s magnet, a clockwise-wound pickup with reversed leads will short out when the hot gets connected to ground and will go silent. If you touch the magnets of such a pickup with your finger, you will be rewarded with a loud humming noise.
Besides the clockwise/counter-clockwise terms, some pickup makers will use the following descriptions, which explain how the pickup is attached to the winding machine and the direction it moves in the machine:
• top right, top going (counter-clockwise)
• top right, top coming (clockwise)
• top left, top going (clockwise)
• top left, top coming (counter-clockwise)
So, if you have to determine the phase of a pickup, here’s how you can do that.
Build yourself a phase-testing unit. This was covered back in our July and August 2017 issues (and can be found here and here), and is probably the easiest way to measure phase.
Use an analog meter with a polarity test option as mentioned above. Connect the pickup wires to the meter, the white (hot) one as the + and the black (ground) one as the –. If the wires of your pickup have different colors, you will have to use the ones that are defined as hot and ground according to the manufacturer. Now, use a heavy screwdriver or a piece of steel or iron and move it quickly toward the pole pieces of the pickup without touching them. When the polarity meter shows +, it means that the wire that is connected to the + input jack is really the hot connection of the pickup. If it shows –, it means that the pickup wire connected to the + input jack is ground. You will be surprised how many times the white wire is not really the hot connection!
Using a standard analog meter without a polarity test is not recommended, and you’ll risk breaking your meter. There are ways to tweak a standard analog meter for this measurement, e.g. using the zero and scale setting or a resistor in series with the pickup to get the needle somewhere off zero, near the middle of the scale. It’s also possible to use a standard digital multimeter by connecting the pickup to it, using the DC/ohms setting, but you have to look quick to note what happens. These MacGyver procedures are only recommended for experienced techies.
This phase/polarity table shows what you can expect from every possible combination:
I hope this will help you avoid possible trouble when you want to combine pickups from different companies. We’ve only scratched the surface of phase and polarity, so ask a pickup pro sometime and they can tell you all about it.
That’s it! Next month, we will take a deep dive into the G&L Passive Treble and Bass control (PTB), so stay tuned!
Until then ... keep on modding!