Roland Forums

Hi group i wonder if anyone here can help me.

I'm thinking of getting a new bass and if i do i'll need to remount my GK-3b. I was thinking of mounting this on the pickguard to avoid damaging the bass, this is of course much lower down the bass than recommended by roland. Can anyone say if this will impact negatively on the way the VB99 uses the Gk-3b. There's a youtube vid showing something similar with a GR30, the responce doesn't seem too bad either.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_LFuBl7B8w

Incidently the pickguard would be a spare, ordered with the bass.

It's got to be by the bridge. The ideal string height is about 2mm to the pickup, and if you mount further down the body then the strings will hit the GK-3B pickup when played. You may run into other problems like unreliable tracking, and the sound 'not quite the same' as it should be, and ghost notes/random octave problems.
If mounting is a problem (i have no probs using the double-sided tape) then you could look at a hex piezo bridge (GraphTech?) to replace the GK-3B.

I should say that i would be ignoring the midi capabilities of the VB99 with this bass, so all i want the vb99 for is its modeling. If all it does is re-model what it hears then in theory it shouldn't matter where the pickup is mounted.

Maybe someone would like to explain how COSM technology works and why it might be necessary to place the pickup as recommended. For example, does it work with a modulated 'sample' of the sound you are going for? Or does it work on fundamental frequencies filtered in real time from the sound source?

As for changing the bridge, will i'm afraid that would not be an option with this particular bass.

Was the GR30 such a radically different beasty to the vb99? If you check that link i provided, it seems to tolerate the position of the pickup.