The Yamaha EZ-EG Guitar Midi Controller Thread

[manytone]

Marc,
Will you release a VSTi demo version?

Well, it looks like there's going to be nothing, only 5 people are interested so far, and for different versions. Coding all that would take me about 200-300 hours.
Coding the ocx for the scripts was already about 80 hours of work, the script was a good 100 hours or even more with all the extras.

I guess I'll have to learn to put myself some limits

Cheers,

marc

Hey marc

You can count me as two people if it helps.
$20 is not much for a script that turns our dream into reality.
Common EZ players show your support
E-mail marc now!

Marc hang in there, I am sure more people are interested than you might think, they simply did not see it yet or couldn't easily navigate to your site to copy the static e-mail link (just a little too complex and inconvenient).

Hey Andrew

That's right you made some videos.

That sort of thing but showing Quick setup, And then going through the modes and showing what each does in a video would be Awesome.
I wish i had more time to fully grasp it all but i sure know this ....
Since i just baught Rechargable Batteries for my EZ i sure use it alot more!
It makes it so easy to use not being attached to Power supply and just having a Long Midi cord when needed

Anyways back on topic ... If you or someone wanted to do some Videos showing the use of the script and the results etc, for the EZ community here... I sure would be willing to give you some Manytone Goods for incentive

Just a thaught as i think it really will help this whole EZ Script concept for everyone.

Paul

[vurt]

ive loved my ezag for a long time now,but on saturday i played a casio midi guitar,controlling some lovely pads with real strings my ez just doesnt feel the same anymore

[AndrewSimon]

Hey Andrew

That's right you made some videos.

That sort of thing but showing Quick setup, And then going through the modes and showing what each does in a video would be Awesome.
I wish i had more time to fully grasp it all but i sure know this ....
Since i just baught Rechargable Batteries for my EZ i sure use it alot more!
It makes it so easy to use not being attached to Power supply and just having a Long Midi cord when needed

Anyways back on topic ... If you or someone wanted to do some Videos showing the use of the script and the results etc, for the EZ community here... I sure would be willing to give you some Manytone Goods for incentive

Just a thaught as i think it really will help this whole EZ Script concept for everyone.

Paul

Hey Paul

Good idea unfortunately I am a very busy man. (I have a business to run + large family)
But I will host the videos if somebody will pick up the task.

[AndrewSimon]

ive loved my ezag for a long time now,but on saturday i played a casio midi guitar,controlling some lovely pads with real strings my ez just doesnt feel the same anymore

The difference between a midi tracking guitar and the EZ is known to everyone.
Each has it's strong points and weaknesses.
Try to play some fast solo piano or try tapping technique and you will see.

[warza]

Vurt,

Which Casio was that? Was it the later one that's a "real" guitar that looks like a strat? It used pitch to MIDI conversion. Those were pretty good. A freind of mine had one a long time ago. They are still all over ebay.

Here's an odd one for you: I bought, and still own the original Beetle Quantar. It was a strat style guitar that had all E strings. The pitch of the strings didn't matter. It used sonar signals that bounced down the strings and constantly read the "length" of the string against the frets. In a sense it was always reading ahead of you even when you weren't playing, so there was absolutley no glitching or pitch to MIDI delay.

It was a beautiful idea, and it worked very well. It also read string dynamics, and (not sure how they did this), string bends. The problem was, it wasn't built that well. It was very fragile, kinda like it was made in someones garage. Very small-company stuff.

I spent more time taking it apart to keep it running than playing it. The rubber that insulated the different bridge sensors actually ate the thin copper wires inside them. Ouch! Kind of like how the oil on the sliders of my old ARP Avatar ate the plastic sliders caps, and they all disintegrated....

I always felt that the idea behind the Beetle Quantar was the best one yet, and it should have kept going. It didn't require any modification of your playing tech, and it had a neck mode where you could just use tapping. With further refinment, maybe it could have been turned into a real guitar that could have been played normally while the string sonars did their thing.

The funny part is that I remember when Yamaha got into a big patent issue with Beetle, when they stole the technology. That was when they came out with the oar shaped G10 (? not sure that's the right name). I never got to play one. Apparantly it flew like a rocket. Lee Rittanour used one. I remember the Yamaha demo record that had some killer fast playing on it. Yamaha was so big, it didn't matter if that little Beetle company went after them. They just stole the technology anyway. Then they dropped it. Sound familiar? SIGH.

A couple months ago I saw one in prime condition on ebay for about $500. I should have grabbed it. It's the only time I've seen one anywhere for sale.

OK, I'm rambling now....to make a point here. I think the time is ripe again, with the whole soft synth market, to come up with a new reasonably priced technology THAT WORKS for guitar players with studios in their notebooks. There's a lot of them out there, and there's money to be made. Pitch to MIDI has been developed as far as it is going to go. It's a dead end. They should re-issue that sonar stuff. HELLO?? I bet M-Audio could do something neat with that like their Trigger Finger Pads.

End rant....

Kevin

[vurt]

ive loved my ezag for a long time now,but on saturday i played a casio midi guitar,controlling some lovely pads with real strings my ez just doesnt feel the same anymore

The difference between a midi tracking guitar and the EZ is known to everyone.
Each has it's strong points and weaknesses.
Try to play some fast solo piano or try tapping technique and you will see.

dont get me wrong,im not tryna slag off the ez,like isaid ive loved mine for a long time now,and im sure once the thrill is over i will again.
unfortunately i cant try anything with the guitar now as its gone home

and yes warza the casio/strat with hex pickups and if i wasnt a skint arsed student i may even look on ebay,but i dont want to upset myself again

[warza]

I got my EG guitar today! I had several hours to sit down with it and compare it with the AG model I received last week. To cut to the chase here's the bottom line: overall the AG model is the better guitar.

What a disappointment. Even though the EG is over $100 more, I really had my heart set on choosing that one. It just looks so cool. I love the styling better than the expensive StarrLabs guitars. Every time I look at it I want to keep it, but I'm sending it back tomorrow.

Here's the lowdown: basically the AG is the friendlier of the two. I kept comparing them by playing them one after the other into my studio set up. There's no contest, the AG has much better string triggers. Don't get me wrong, if you bought the EG and had never tried the other model, I'm not saying you made a bad purchase. It's when you A-B them, the mechanical design of the lower cost AG is much better. It's triggers are very sensitive to light playing with your fingers. The velocity curve is very smooth and wide giving to a fuller range of playing styles. The EG model has much stiffer metal rods that are raised over the body compared to the AG's lower, soft rubber "strings". I tried to play as consistently as possible with both guitars. In my usual style of finger picking to play chordal piano parts, the AG responded beautifully smoothly. After awhile I could almost forget I was playing the guitar controller, while everything that came out of my fingers was mirrored as expressive acoustic piano. Playing the same parts into the EG resulted in stiff, hard staccato playing, with about half of the softer notes not triggering at all. Ahhhgh!

It's obvious that the EG has been set up for playing harder with a pick. In practice however, is that what most people would want to be limited to, while attempting to trigger a MIDI instrument? Wailing away at block cords with a pick is just not going to transfer very well musically, no matter what controller you're using. I'm pissed. Yamaha clearly dropped the ball here big time, on what is supposed to be the "better" more expensive version of the EZ line.

Not being one to give up, I decided to get a Philips screwdriver and take a look at it's works inside.... I was really hoping to find a trimmer adjustment to increase the sensitivity of the EG's string triggers. No luck. It's all solid state. After poking around inside, I discovered that each one of the piezoelectric transducers (some clever engineering in there), is hardwired directly into an op amp, just before feeding into the central CPU. There is no way of manually adjusting anything. The trigger sensitivity and the velocity curves are all locked into the units' firmware. This is a ridiculous doof-up on Yamaha's part. Not only is the EG not as sensitive to triggering as the AG model, it is also fixed with a really hard velocity curve that makes everything you play sound as though you are playing full out "rock" style. I did not notice that playing hard with a pick on the AG tripped it up at all, so the AG is clearly the superior of the two.

With all those buttons and controllers on there, it would have been easy, without adding any more cost to the guitar, to add user adjustable string sensitivity and velocity curves. Remember this isn't a keyboard, it's a guitar based alternate controller. Having control over string sensitivity is simply mandatory. I hope this isn't the end of the EZ line. Please Yamaha come out with something better than this!

A few more comparisons between the AG and the EG:
The EG is clearly packaged as the "pro" version of the two. Instead of a plain cardboard box with black lettering, it comes in a really sleek package with full-color artwork on the outside.

The little internal speaker on the wooden EG sounds really cheesy compared to the much larger speaker in the hollow body AG. The AG almost sounds like a real acoustic guitar when you are playing it with its internal sounds.

The AG comes with a lumpy looking AC adapter that's about twice as big as the EG's.

The EG comes with a cheap, kids guitar strap.

For me, the supplied UX16 USB MIDI interface supplied with the EG just turned out to be a piece of junk. It's the first MIDI interface I've ever had that didn't work. I spent about an hour and a half trying to get the drivers loaded into my Windows XP machine. My computer locked up and crashed several in the process. Attempting to find updated drivers on Yamaha's web site was stupidly difficult. They are buried in their flashy looking menus. Getting rid of the old ones, and loading in the new made no difference. My computer refused to recognize the interface. The system said it was functioning but not working correctly. I finally gave up trying to figure out what was wrong with it. Piece of CRAP! While I was searching for the drivers, I ran across some reviews online that said that the interface does not allow throughput of system exclusive data, and that you are better off using any other cheaper interface.

Hope this helps anyone who's trying to decide which model to get. Again, this decision breaks my heart as I really was hoping to keep the very cool, futuristic looking EG model. As an aside, I also attempted to make up for the difference in velocity curves by changing MIDI filtering settings in Cubase. I could get close to evening out both models response, but the EG's trigger sensitivity just kept missing half of my playing. I tried biting the bullet by compensating with harder playing to keep it triggering evenly, but then I couldn't play guitar as well with the heavy-handed picking style. Sigh.

Okay AG. Your my new baby now

Kevin

[AndrewSimon]

Okay AG. Your my new baby now

Kevin

I don't want to say I told you so... but I did

[warza]

[Markleford]

Yeah... well... I like the whammy! And the MIDI interface works great on my laptop. I suppose it's also of some use that you dampen the strings with the actual strings, not a touchplate.

Worth an extra $100 or so? Hard to say. I'm not really the one to ask, as I play almost exclusively by tapping-style, or one-hand legato with my other hand abusing the whammy.

If you still have the EG open, could you compare the pin-outs between the two? I'm hoping that the boards are secretly identical, and hopefully there's an unused connector for the whammy on the AG that we could just hook up to a knob.

Thanks for the dual-review, warza.

- m

[sheldrakes]

Warza wrote

Remember this isn't a keyboard, it's a guitar based alternate controller. Having control over string sensitivity is simply mandatory.

Actually it is just an educational toy, and a brilliant bit of engineering at that. Yamaha also did their homework on the two basic types of would be future guitarists, the gentle chamber music sogovian plucker and the whammy wanking heavy metal f****. ( ) The controller function is a spin off due to the inventive spirit of the computer age (thanks again to marc and markleford ) Unfortunately companies like Yamaha are too cumbersome to grasp niche markets, a product has to have a certain market potential before it becomes a project. Think back to IBM and the toy PC. Big companies only make what their employees know, and if you know all about midi controllers then you’re going to fill it up with essentials (like trigger sensitivity adjustments, velocity control, robust enough for live gigs etc.) until you’re back in the standard price range. Unfortunately once Yamaha call it a controller, expectations are going to rise. The real test for Yamaha would be to design a controller worthy of the name at the same price, by getting rid of the gimmicks such as internal speakers and karaoke, and balancing it with some basic essentials. Yamaha could glean a mean spec for a low priced controller just by watching this thread. The market is there as long as the price is right, I think that every guitarist who wants a bit of piano and bass on their home made demos would buy one. Yamaha this is your wake up call!!
greetings to all.

[silicon/silicium]

just ordered my Ag yesterday, now waiting for it, and I m maybe a future customer for a vst script...

[ugo]

the proposed plugin version sounds like a great idea to me.
pm sent.

-ugo

[CapnLockheed]

I'd be willing to send some $ RIGHT NOW if it would help expedite
a VST version!!

Cheers.........CL

[bastien]

Sorry if this is a really vague query but... Has anyone else succesfully recorded the AG into Tracktion 2? It sounds fine when you play it, but then when you play back the midi recording, something ain't right...