Anyone have any tips to reduce crosstalk from the lowest bass string into the melody side?

I want to play live with a clean bass sound and a distorted lead but I'm getting quite a lot of bass coming through, I'm assuming because of the high-gain on the treble side.

Cheers,
Nick

There are no real orthodox ways of achieving this (of course I delight in being proven otherwise by some clever Stickist here). The melody side will need to come down - although, you could lower the bass level or roll back some of the lows when you engage the high gain tone.

FWIW, the group spacing between the melody and bass sides was increased by 1.02mm for the 10-string Railboard relative to the 10-string Chapman Stick. This should help 10-string Railers.

The 12-string instruments are most prone to this as the group spacing is more snug, details below.

10 String
tring spacing .320" (8.13mm), Group spacing .430" (10.92mm)

12-String
String spacing .305" (7.62mm), Group spacing .400" (9.14mm)

10-String Railboard
String spacing .340" (8.64mm), Group spacing .470" (11.94mm)

12-String Railboard
String spacing .305" (7.62mm), Group spacing .400" (9.14mm)

Your avatar is one of my favs on the board and I am fan of your music for sure. Cheers.

Hello Nick,

You might try taping or gluing a small steel shield between the pickups and the two sets of strings. Doesn't need to be large, perhaps a cm above the strings and half the length of the pickup. Even a thin sheet should do. You can get a good piece of steel from an old transformer.

The idea is to shield the pickups so they cannot "see" the other string set. I am looking at three of my pickups, a Stickup, a Block, and a Vilex, and it looks like this might work better on the Stickup because the pole pieces are discrete, while the other pickups extent across the gap. In those you might use a piece of steel over the pickup extension to shield it.

I have not tried this, so I don't know if it will work, but it is worth a try. Of course start by just holding test pieces in there by hand while you experiment with size and position. Tell us how it works!

Aaron

Gene - thank you very much - you're too kind!

My avatar is, as any fule kno*, the mighty Nigel Molesworth - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigel_Molesworth

I shall soon release some of my Stick music "properly" (well, via Distrokid) which might make you change your tune - this might be the first one of those: https://on.soundcloud.com/Zx7kP

As a way of testing the water, I did recently release a piece of "teflon" music with a friend, drummer Shane Meehan. https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/cookmeehan/retroverse

Aaron, you know what, I was thinking exactly the same thing this evening! I'll find a bit of steel tomorrow and report back.

Thanks guys and happy new year,
Nick

*Nigel's catchphrase, not insulting you!

Can the offending bass string be filtered out from the Melody side? (EQ)

I always do two things:
Phase inverting one side output and cutting sub-bass out of the melody side output. Floats my boat well enough as long as I stay away from heavily distorted tones.

Thanks, Per and WerkSpace!

At the moment I'm just trying this straight into Cubase so I may be more aware of it than I might be in a live situation.

Per - what gadgets are you using to achieve that?

Aaron - I have just cut a 12cm strip of 10mm x 2mm section mild steel and whilst not 100% it's immediately making a substantial difference! My pickups are Villex, by the way, and the shielding works best when the piece of steel is place directly onto the surface of the pickup. I'll try to find a wider strip and see if that makes any difference.

Thanks all!
Nick

I have 2 methods:
1. filtering entire band below 100 Hz on the treble side and appropriately setting noise gates and compressors on both sides,
or
2. I turn down the volume on the treble side, and run the GK pickup on this side and use him with virtual distortion/overdrive in GR, VG or SY gear.

It depends on what gear the project calls for.

- If playing a live concert I cut sub-bass on the melody side with an EQ early in that input's signal path inside the Axe-Fx box I'm using. I have not found a way to phase-invert a signal in Fractal Audio's products.

- If recording, I do both sub-bass cutting and phase inversion in the UA Apollo USB audio interface. That is IF I record each side into its own channel, e.g. full instrument coming up as two mono tracks in the DAW. Sometimes I prefer to record a stereo signal with the two sides fully panned left/right so that I can later make them two mono tracks in the DAW. That makes it easy to give the recorded melody side the full treatment (currently using Cubase and Bitwig, but I remember this worked like a charm in Logic too). Even if I record with an Axe-Fx I run it analogically into the UA Apollo so that I can play through the hybrid plugin strip of a Neve 1084. For the Stick I like the Neve sound better than the SSL strip, which is known for spilling magic on a recording input.

Hi Per,

the Filter-Block in Axe Fx Has an invert parameter that should be able to do that.

Best Regards, Andi