Gear Reviews
PreSonus, Studio One 3 Professional Review
Studio One 3 Professional from PreSonus has got to be the most complete and robust DAW that I have ever come across, and that goes without mentioning all the hardware that PreSonus has that works with it perfectly.
From just starting out with creating a new song or project to those that have been doing it for years, Studio One 3 Professional is a workhorse and has everything you need to get your productions done without using extra plugins, loops, or software instruments. Alone, there are 44 tutorials covering every aspect of Studio One that you need to get you up and running in no time.
When creating a new song, you have an abundant amount of templates to choose from or you can create your own. What’s great about the style templates is that, say for instance, you load the House/Techno template, it opens up with a house/techno sample song complete with tracks and basically all you really need to get started to create your production.
Virtual Instruments
Studio One 3 Professional has five virtual instruments which include Impact, Mai Tai, Mojito, Presence XT, and SampleOne. Impact is a drum machine with 45 kits and 34 MVP Loops, which contains kits and special effects. Mai Tai is a synth with two oscillators, 2 LFO’s, filter and envelope controls, modulation, delay, and reverb, and noise control. Mai Tai has patches for bass, bell, drum, FX, Heavy Artillery, leads, pads, poly, strings, and templates to get you started on creating a synth of your own.
Mojito is another synth with 59 patches and the ability to create your own patches. Personally, I think Presence XT is the coolest synth in Studio One 3 Professional. Presence XT includes virtually all instruments such as guitars, keys, organs, percussion, bass, effects, strings, brass, and woodwinds. I noticed some of the instruments have key switches, especially within the orchestral ones. SampleOne, as the name implies, is a sampler. SampleOne lets you import loops and will even let you import an audio file, either part or whole, into SampleOne right from the audio track. SampleOne even reads rex files that are widely used with reason. Having not used SampleOne before, I was up and running fairly quickly. If you have used samplers before, SampleOne really is a breeze.
Arranger Track and Scratch Pad
There are lots of tools and effects within Studio One 3 Professional to help you create your song the way you want it. The Arranger Track feature allows you to rearrange your song by copy and paste, moving sections, and deleting sections. The Arranger Track helps you organize your song into sections like Intro, Verse, Chorus, and so on. You can then click on a section and move it to anywhere in the song where you want it place. I have found that the Scratch Pad feature works great with Arranger Track. It let me create something, not being sure if it worked or not, and not messing up my creation, to experiment.
When creating the scratch pad, you can drag it over the original arrangement to the place where you want to try something different, and from that point, you can drag whatever you want from the original composition to the scratch pad. When you achieve want you want in Scratch Pad, you can drag it back to you original composition on Arranger Track. These two tools combined work great together.
I’ve been taking an EDM class, and one of the assignments was to create a track that is only 20-24 seconds long, a full composition, then break that down into different parts and make an entire arrangement out of that creation. This has and will make future compositions easier for myself and everyone else as well! You can create as many Scratch Pads as you want in a song, so the possibilities are endless, and even more fun for doing remixes.
Midi Effects
Diving into midi effects, I want to start off with Note FX, which is new to Studio One 3 Professional and is found under the Instruments tab. Note FX is used to help change and or make midi data easier to work with tools that you may be familiar with such as arpeggiators, input filters, repeaters, and chord tools.
What I found with the Arpeggiator was that the presets seemed more lifelike and not robotic as with some other DAWS. With having up to 32 note lengths for the Arpeggiator, the options are almost endless, but I think you may find yourself using the really cool presets more than creating your own and manipulating them in some form. It can do single note arpeggios or even add some cool rhythms to chords in chord mode, and of course, there is a user input mode. The Arpeggiator has nine presets.
The Chorder is another tool that creates chords from single notes and if you are like me, well, I can do okay on piano, but if I can play chords using one note, then that is what I’m going to do. There are presets to use or you can create your own to use. I like the fact that it is really quick to create your own chords in Chorder, especially if you want to use extended chords like maybe a C Major 11 for example. Chords can be transposed an octave up or down. The default range of Chorder is C2 to C4, but the range can be adjusted to be larger or smaller. The presets are divided into three sections, Chord Groups, Chord Types, and Intervals. Chord Groups has ten presets including Neo-Soul, EDM, and Rock. Chord Types has nine presets for Augmented, Diminished, Major, Sus Chords, and more.
Intervals has five presets including octaves, thirds, fourth, and fifths. I combined the Arpeggiator and Chorder on a piano track using the Piano in Presence XT and came up with some really cool ideas for future tracks.
Input Filter is a tool I will probably be using a lot. It helps to define the key range and velocity of your midi data. Sometimes when creating a new song, I find myself adjusting velocity for each note, which can be time consuming, Input Filter will help speed up this process so you can spend more time creating new music. The last tool in Note FX is the Repeater. The Repeater can create echo and delay effects, adjust pitch and velocity, and note length. In a way, this may seem similar to the Arpeggiator, but it isn’t. A lot of different patterns can be created from this with dynamics and velocity being a big part of the patterns. I think I had the most fun combining the Chorder and Repeater and taking the presets and manipulating them. It came up with some really cool chord changes and rhythms with being able to adjust pitch and velocity for each step, having a total of up to 32 steps. You can also adjust the note length from quarter note to a 1/64th triplet note. The Repeater can also transpose down 70 semitones or up 120 semitones for each individual step. Not only does it make for some nice chord changes, it can be used to create some groovy bass lines too!
Extended FX Chains
Extended FX Chains allow you to be more creative with effects and can be any combination of serial or parallel effects. Each channel in the Mix console has a channel editor, which also allows you to do routing of the effects, with basically just drag and drop into the channel editor. You also have the option of using a splitter within the channel editor, which allows you to expand the routing of effects even more with being able to do up to 5 connections with the splitter. You can also mute any of the effects and have options for split mode to include normal, channel, or frequency split. In normal mode, the signal is sent to all devices on the splitter, in channel mode, say if you have 2 effects on the splitter, one will go to the right channel, the other to the left channel. In frequency mode narrows or widens the frequency range to the effects. You can even use splitters within splitters, so the amount of effects that you can use is practically limitless!
Multi Instruments
Another cool feature of Studio One 3 Professional is Multi Instruments. This, as the name applies, lets you have multiple instruments on one track and allows you to record and play them as a single instrument. Basically, this works very similar to the FX chains, just drag and drop an instrument on a track, then add another to the same track. When you drag another instrument onto the track, choose the option to combine instead of replace. You then get a window where the multi instruments are displayed. From this point, you can edit the instruments in the Multi Instrument window changing the many options that are available, adding NoteFX, with a minimum of 3 instruments, setting the range, transpose, panning each instrument individually, and more. You also have the option to save these instruments as presets and there are a lot of Multi Instrument presets already provided for use. All VST and AU instruments will work as Multi Instruments. Once you have your multi instruments set up, you can add and remove different instruments right into the multi instrument window, instead of dragging them to the track and adding them that way. More options include control knobs to control parameters and effects of the instruments. I suggest taking a look at the multi instrument presets to get an idea of how powerful this is.
Mastering
Studio One 3 Professional is packed full of everything you need, from starting and building your song, all the way down to final mastering. Studio One 3 Professional includes all the tools needed to master your project or song, no matter what level you are at. Studio One projects are built for mastering and it has four workspaces. You start out by placing the songs you want to master in the track column or project page. Studio One 3 Professional can also mix down your song for you automatically. Each track can be modified separately for your project. VST and AU effects and tools can be used along with the mastering tools already found in Studio One 3 Professional. The mastering section has everything you need to finish your project including compressors, limiters, EQs, spectrum analyzers, ability to place your tracks in different order and even crossfade tracks. I can see where crossfading tracks would be exceptionally beneficial with doing film scoring.
Conclusion
Studio One 3 Professional is the complete package, from start to finish for your songs and projects, no matter what the genre. Over the past few months, I have learned a lot about Studio One 3 Professional and still have a lot more to learn. There is so much that it can do that it is almost impossible to cover everything. From a basic standpoint, it is a DAW that allows you to create, produce and master your creations, whether it be EDM, or just doing tracks for others.
From a bigger perspective, it is everything you need in one package. I used it for quite a few airgigs and my clients were very pleased. I’ve used it in combination with Notion 6 and I’ve also used it to create EDM, beats, etc, and it does it all. As a matter of fact, with everything included in Studio One 3 Professional, you don’t need anything else.
Studio One 3 Professional also works great with other tools from PreSonus such as the Faderport series and PreSonus audio interfaces. It’s pretty cool how the Faderport works along with Studio One 3 Professional really giving you the feeling and control of something bigger than a home studio.
Check out Studio One 3 Professional online at presonus.com or at a PreSonus dealer near you.
Gear Reviews
Review Transcript: BITE Custom Bass – The Black Knight PP Bass
This is a written transcript of our video review of the BITE Custom Bass Black Knight PP Bass originally published on March 4, 2024
BITE Custom Bass – The Black Knight PP Bass Review…
Bass Musician Magazine did a review on a Steampunk bass from BITE Guitars about three years ago, it was an amazing instrument, and we were very impressed. Now we’re happy to bring you another BITE bass, the Black Knight PP.
Everybody needs a P-type bass, it’s the standard of bass. If you’re recording, they want you to have a P bass. So why not have something that gives you a little more by having two instead of one P pickup. That’s the idea of this bass, it’s the first thing that leaps out: the double P pickup configuration.
Installing two of their 1000 millivolt split-coil pickups, BITE then went one step further and wired them up in a 4-way parallel/series circuit, a look at the controls reveal a 4-way rotary selector:
The first position, marked “B”, gives you the bridge pickup by itself.
The second position, marked “P”, gives you the bridge and neck pickups in parallel mode, that’s the traditional J-type circuit, it reduces output due to the physical law of parallel circuits.
Position number 3 is marked “N”, it gives you the neck pickup by itself.
And finally, number 4, marked “S”, gives your bridge and neck in a series (humbucking) mode which adds up resistances and thus boosts output. The other two controls are master volume and master tone.
What’s more, like every BITE bass, this one also has a reinforced headstock heel designed to give it extra output and sustain. The BITE website features a graph and explanation of what they have done to the heel, as compared to traditional headstocks.
A look at the body reveals a beautiful Black Blast body finish and underneath that we have alder wood. The bass has a matching headstock with a 4-in-line tuner setup and the traditional bite out of it, so everybody will know what kind of bass you’re playing. The pickguard is 3-ply black, the neck is vintage tinted hard maple and it has a satin speed finish at the back which keeps your thumb from sticking.
On top of that, there’s a clear-coated roasted black locust fretboard with black blocks marking the frets. The nut is a black Graph Tec nut, we’ve got diamond dome control knobs, and the tuners are lightweight compacts with cloverleaf buttons and a 1:17 ratio precision gear. The bridge is a Gotoh brass bridge with 19-millimeter string spacing.
Overall measurements: we’ve got a standard 34″ scale, a 1.65″ width nut and a C neck profile. This bass weighs 8.2 pounds, or 3,7 kilograms for our metric friends, and it uses standard 18% nickel silver frets.
Taking a closer look at the sound, this bass is a joy to play. The BITE proprietary 1000 millivolt pickups deliver an extraordinary amount of output which is surprising considering this is a passive instrument. You may even want to set your amp to active mode because of all of the juice you’re getting out of this guy.
The tonal possibilities are very versatile, it’s a straight P if you want but also much more with those different arrangements of the circuitry. So why have multiple basses when you’ve got one that can give you your basic P plus a lot more?
To sum it up, the Black Knight PP is an amazing instrument. The attention to detail that BITE puts into their basses is second to none. This bass is also amazingly balanced and gorgeous to hold and feel with the satin neck finish.
For more information, visit online at bite.guitars/product/black-knight-pp
Bass Videos
Reviews: Phil Jones Bass Compact Plus 450 and Bass Engine 17
Phil Jones Bass Compact Plus 450 and Bass Engine 17 Reviews…
In this issue, we take an in-depth look at two new amps from Phil Jones Bass, the Compact Plus 450 and Bass Engine 17.
For more information, visit online at pjbworld.com
Bass Videos
Video Review: BITE Custom Bass – The Black Knight PP Bass
BITE Custom Bass – The Black Knight PP Bass Review…
I am sure many of you saw my review of the Snobby Steampunk Bass from BITE Guitars back in February of 2021 and will remember what a remarkable bass it was. BITE has been building custom basses since 2019 and has a unique custom approach where you can configure your bass to your specs.
I am very excited to have another Bass From BITE Guitars in my hands, The Black Knight PP Bass!
The need for a P-Bass in one’s armamentarium is pretty standard for bass players and I recall chatting about this with Marty O’Brien about a year ago. It turns out that Marty and BITE Guitars got together and came up with this excellent configuration that gives you a P-Bass with a whole lot more. Marty even played his own Black Knight PP bass at the 2024 NAMM show. You can see his review here.
Join me as I take an in-depth look at this very cool instrument and share all the details.
Here is The Black Knight Bass from BITE Guitars!
For more information, visit online at bite.guitars/product/black-knight-pp
Gear Reviews
Gear Review: Origin Effects Cali76 Compact Bass
Origin Effects Cali76 Compact Bass Review…
Throughout the evolution of music, bass players have sought tools to sculpt and enhance their sonic landscapes, and one indispensable ally in this pursuit has been compression. Origin Effects, a name synonymous with premium audio craftsmanship, introduces the Cali76 Compact Bass Compressor, a pedal that pays homage to the legacy of compression and brings forth a new chapter in bass sonic mastery.
As we delve into the world of the Cali76 Compact Bass Compressor, we’ll explore how Origin Effects seamlessly weaves together the heritage of compression and contemporary bass demands, promising a pedal that not only honors the past but propels your bass playing into the future. Join us on this sonic expedition as we dissect the nuances of the Cali76 Compact and uncover the secrets it holds for bass players seeking the perfect blend of vintage warmth and modern versatility.
For Starters, the Cali76 is a studio-grade FET compressor pedal, based on the classic Urei 1176, but with some features optimized for bass guitar. For those of you who are not familiar with it, a FET (Field Effect Transistor) compressor is essentially a solid-state tube compressor emulation that allows for fast and precise control over the attack and the release parameters; allows for extreme compression ratios; and finally adds the typical 1176 color and character to the sound.
Together with the common controls we see in most compressor pedals – Ratio, Attack/Release, input (just like the original 1176, the threshold in this pedal is fixed), and output (makeup gain). The Cali76 offers two more controls dedicated to us bass players.
A Dry control – This allows us to mix in our dry, uncompressed signal to the pedal output. This is great for when we want to add back some of our playing dynamics to the compressed sound or for when you want some volume back in situations where the compression starts taking away the volume.
A High Pass Filter control – Low frequencies on a bass guitar signal normally overwhelm compressors. This high pass filter allows the compressor to only react to higher frequencies, which helps preserve the natural dynamics of our playing while keeping the low end intact.
Metering on this pedal can be a bit hard to get used to at first. There’s a single LED light on the pedal, that not only serves as an On/Off light, but it’s also our meter. It glows red when no compression is applied and orange for active compression. The brighter the light, the greater the amount of gain reduction. Yellow signifies that the gain reduction reached 27dB and maximum reduction occurs around 38 dB.
In practical terms, it’s all about working with the input and the LED to find the sweet spot (turn the input to zero, start playing and slowly increase the input level until you start seeing the LED glowing orange, which means there’s reduction going on).
With 6 highly interactive knob controls, this pedal implies some degree of compressor knowledge and also some amount of tweaking and experimentation to find the perfect settings. The good news is that it is very hard to make this pedal sound bad…
It can go from very subtle compression settings to very extreme, and it can do everything in between. Also, the team at Origin has been kind enough to add a couple of sample settings in the manual to get players started and to help us understand better how the pedal works.
Dynamic Control is a setting that provides natural compression, balancing dynamics between various playing techniques. It is a subtle compression that will work almost out of the box almost all the time. Having a medium setting for the High Pass Filter ensures an honest translation of the lower string dynamics.
Parallel compression is a popular studio technique, where both compressed and natural signals are blended. We get the sound and feel of hard compression while retaining the natural playing dynamics.
Percussive, lively & Fat is a setting that uses a slower attack time to accentuate the start of any note. Then using a fast release allows the compressor to recover between notes so that the phrases sound more percussive. Ideal for slapping and other percussive techniques.
Finally, I would like to mention the classic 1176 tonal coloration. It’s not a secret that engineers all around would sometimes use the 1176 compressor, without applying any compression, just to get the tonal coloration into the instrument sound.
And the Cali76 compressor is no different, it has such a rich, warm, and full coloration that’s super pleasing to the ear and makes you want to have it ON all the time. So be aware, that if you want a transparent compressor, this pedal is not for you!
All in all, it is easy to understand why this pedal became a favorite of so many bass players around the world. The Cali76 Compact stands as a testament to the meticulous craftsmanship and thoughtful engineering that Origin Effects is renowned for. It seamlessly navigates through the rich history of compression, offering bass players a gateway to the soulful resonance of the past while empowering them to sculpt a contemporary sonic future.
Whether you’re a seasoned bass maestro or a budding virtuoso, the Cali76 Compact invites you to embark on a sonic journey where every note is held in a delicate balance between tradition and innovation. As we bid farewell to our exploration, we do so with the realization that the Cali76 Compact is more than just a pedal; it’s a sonic companion that elevates the artistry of bass playing
For more information, visit online at origineffects.com
Gear Reviews
Spector NS Ethos HP 4 Bass Review
Spector NS Ethos HP 4 Bass Review…
Not long ago, I did a review of the Spector NS Dimension HP 5 Bass and I have just been given the honor and privilege of reviewing the Spector NS Ethos HP 4 Bass. I have to say, another great bass from Spector that is hard to put down! While there are some similarities between both basses, there are also some noticeable differences which is why I believe having both is essential to any bass arsenal.
Spector, widely used by many rock and metal bassists like Ian Hill, Alex Webster, Colin Edwin, Doug Wimbish, and many more, just to name a few, has a long-standing in these genres. Well, that’s about to change! The bass I used for the review, didn’t see any of those genres, matter of fact, I used it on a few classic country gigs and at church too! However, when at home in the studio, I let the funk out. The NS Ethos HP 4 Bass is an all-around great bass for any genre and will not disappoint.
Let’s get into the specs about the bass, and here we will find the differences between the HP 5 Bass and the HP 4.
Forget that one is a 5 string, while the other is a 4, while that is a difference, that’s not one that I feel needs to be noted as both models are available as 4 and 5 strings. The Spector NS Ethos HP 4 Bass has a 34” scale, 24 fret, 3 piece maple neck through construction with solid alder wings, ebony fingerboard along with centered and side dots and the 12th fret Spector logo inlay with a brass nut.
While the pickups are different as the NS Dimension HP 5 Bass uses the EMG 45DC and the NS Ethos HP 4 Bass sports the EMG 35DC pickups, they are the same pickup configurations, the difference being, one for 4 string, the other for 5 string. The electronics are the same, consisting of a Darkglass Tone Capsule preamp which consists of +-12dB @70Hz for Bass, +-12dB @500Hz for Mids, and +-12dB @2.8kHz for Hi Mids. Controls for Spector NS Dimension HP 5 Bass consist of Master Volume, Blend, Bass, Mid, and Hi Mid controls. The electronics are powered by a 9-volt battery.
The bridge is a Hi-Mass locking bridge with intonation screws and the tuners are sealed die-cast. All hardware is black. Same as the Spector NS Dimension HP 5 Bass, the HP 4 Bass is available in 4 different finishes, White Sparkle Gloss, Gunmetal Gloss, Plum Crazy Gloss & Black Gloss. The bass also comes with a very nice and well-padded gig bag.
Check out the Spector NS Ethos HP 4 Bass at a Spector Music Retailer today near you or visit online at spectorbass.com/product/ns-ethos-hp-4/
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