Hey hex folks.
Do you know this pickup: Submarine Six?
It looks like a really interesting option.
I can’t really test it myself — I’d have to buy quite a bit of extra gear, and winter is harsh and the wallet is frozen.
But just looking at it with the naked brain, it surprises me in a good way.
Hex audio, no hardware MIDI, no protocol stuff — just six strings as six signals.
Potentially feels like a good direction, especially in a hex context.
Throwing it out there for the collective consideration.
the subsix works great with mg3hex and it also does fine on its own.
i like being able to put it where one likes, in my case that is closer to the neck.
i could see it enhancing everything from metal to jazz. the subsix people should send one to tuck of tuck and patti.
as it is mounted directly to the body without springs, it does pick up surface noise. i had some loose bridge springs which were noisy enough that i had to mute them.
i like the cables, but i could see them bothering some. they are slender but seem strong.
a plus over other options is that it is easy to move the subsix between guitars. i look forward to trying it out on a baritone acoustic.
it’s a great solution. it has heft and is well designed.
Fwiw, I tried it and I never was able to make the subsix work for me. Maybe I did something wrong and the guy kindely send me another one thinking the first was broken, but it did not worked for me and ultimately I send them back.
The problem was I never had good isolation beetwen some strings wathever position/Guitar I tried.
I have a subsix on the way, looking forward to hooking it up. I was thinking with hex (afaik) impedance isn’t great so I would need to give it a boost via my DI800?
Well the biggest issue for me is that for midi guitar you want your pickup as close to the bridge as possible and I can only achieve this by removing the current bridge pickup. I choose the skinny GK3 and it works great. What I’m really waiting for is an optical hex pickup but nobody seems to offer one directly to consumers. If they ever become available I would build a guitar around it. All solid wood, no magnetic pickups just one bridge optical pickup for infinite sustain and 100% string separation…. and zero noise!
i’m less convinced that a pitch to midi pickup needs to be next to the bridge. that might be more gospel than science.
on several guitars i’ve tried the neck pickup vs the bridge with mg3 and although there may be an effect, i think playing technique is a much greater factor.
i’m also in line for the optical hex solution. and i’m also totally on board with solid/neck thru and no magnetic pickups whatsoever. imagine if boss put two of their top engineers on this. it’d be done before summer.
Happy Friday! So I set up the subsix going via the behringer di800 into the UR44C. It works ok, but I get quite a few note retriggers. The gate doesn’t seem to solve the issue. I’m tweaking settings hear and there and using the gate quite high. Seems not to help much. Do you get many note retriggers with your setup?
Side note, apart from midi it’s great fun to play around with audio-wise too
If anybody feels like recording a few notes with this pickup system (only dry guitar sound, single notes, no effects or synths), I will be happy to take a look at it. The pickup position may indeed be the culprit and of course make sure you set the string tuning in the HEX module correctly for all strings and not upside down.
the ur44c has six inputs, what does mg3 do in this case? i know with 8 it holds the first two and uses the last 6. could the input assignment on the ur44c be part of the issue?
Oh ok, interesting. I’m not sure - I configure it to channel 1 - 6 in the settings, seems to pick up each individual string ok, getting good signal levels at least. I did try the pick up on a couple of different guitars - on the prs SE there isn’t much room for manoeuvre so it’s kind of bang in the middle. On the shuriken I tried it right against the neck - still got the retriggers in each case. I also tried with the backplate on and of to see if string distance made any difference but unfortunately it did not. If it is because I need more inputs, I have a good excuse to tell the wife why I need a new audio interface
if you have a moment, please try any of your guitars, via their 1/4” pickup instead of the subsix, with the mg3 tracker instead hex and see if the retriggers continue.
perhaps this file will not be very helpful, as the guitar is strung with all ‘b’ strings.
i am hitting the strings from ‘lowest’ to ‘highest’, each one individually. then the fifth fret. each set was done twice.
i’ve semi-permanently wired the subsix in place so experimenting with other guitars will have to wait.
using ableton’s volume meter as a guide, the neighboring strings are 18-22db softer than the primary.
@fretaddict is the clearance over the subsix similar to or much less than your magnetic pickups? another forum member returned his subsix because he couldn’t get enough string clearance.
There is some kind of swell or filter going on there especially notable on the low string?
Edit.. I think just it’s the “all b strings” that confuse my perception.
I am trying to do a recording but can’t figure out how to output to camtasia properly
So, if I use my normal pickup, re-triggering doesn’t occur. With the hex pickup it seems to be mainly the B and A strings re-triggering. My standard pickups are a bit lower than the hex. But I did take the backplate of to lower the hex a bit more. Perhaps if I try raising those strings a bit it could solve the issue?
it’s a hack but sometimes with software like camtasia using a headphone cable from the steinberg headphone out into the system’s audio in can give you what you need.
raising the strings is worth trying. if the retriggering stops then we’ll know for sure that the problem is the proximity. if the action is still suitable then this might be a fix.
i do get ghost notes, but retriggers aren’t a problem for me.
the two problem strings seem to indicate that the subsix does not match your neck curvature. do all of your necks have the same radius?
i wouldn’t call this a solution, but it may also be worth trying a strike filter.
