Alright, we're back with
another stack of bass gadgets. Will they make you a better bassist? Or will they burn a hole in your wallet and gather dust in the closet? I'm putting another 10 gadgets
to the test to find out. As usual, there's no affiliate
links, no sponsors, no BS, let's just see what happens. [BassBuzz Theme] All right, we got a lot of
bass gadgets to get through, so make use of the chapter
markers if you need to, and make sure you stick
around for the end, where I'll cover the most important gadget that I think all bass players should have. First up are the Funk Fingers, which were dreamt up by legendary bassist Tony Levin in the 90s. These are little drumsticks
that you attach to your plucking fingers. The idea is you get a
totally different tone, different way to attack the bass, and maybe even come up
with some fresh bass ideas. My rating [sighs],
translation, think about it. ♪ Think think about it ♪ They're definitely different, I have to admit that my reaction when I first put them on
and started playing was, "Why would I ever want my
bass to sound like this?" And also there's a challenge of playing in rhythm, it's a very different muscle
movement than normal plucking. so there's a learning curve, and I still kind of suck with them. But as I've gotten a
little bit better at them and spent more time with the sound, I've noticed I have more fun
and kind of get into a groove and feel like I'm exploring. So to make these work, you need really good fretting hand muting, because the odds that you're
gonna hit more strings than you mean to are...
basically 100% chance. So check out my Muting Fixes video, if you need help with
your fretting hand muting. I actually liked the tone
more from the Guitar Triller that I reviewed last
time, because I feel like I can get that sound,
but I can also go softer. And it does a bunch of other a bunch of other weird strumming stuff that I never even really
figured out how to use that you can't do with the Funk Fingers. But maybe I'm wrong about the tone, and this could work as like
a slap alternative sound. They are pretty similar sounds in the way the waves are shaped, there's a big spike right when you hit, and then the sound
tapers off dramatically. So I just think for the average bassist, they're not of much use, but if you think they might spark some creativity for you, then I think they're
definitely worth the $28. What if instead of having to
pluck your bass like a Muggle, you could just wave your hands and make bass notes magically appear? This is the Hot Hand 3 by Source Audio, it is a handheld expression
tool that uses an accelerometer to detect your movements
and send the signal to whatever effects pedal
you're running it into through the little base station unit. Sounds weird, right? Let's check it out. My rating, translation think about it. Full disclosure, I don't feel like I'm
very good with this thing. I've experienced a pretty
steep learning curve, trying to get a sense of
where I am in the action, and get it calibrated properly. But some people totally
slay with this thing. And by some people I
basically mean Nathan Navarro. So the biggest point of
suckage for me with this thing is not knowing what expression
signal I'm sending exactly, which is not a problem when you're using a standard expression
pedal like this Moog EP-1, because you can just feel with your foot, it's really obvious. When you're here, you're
sending the minimum signal. When you're here, you're
sending the maximum signal. And you only have this
one plane to worry about. So it's a little bit of a
mystery with this thing, and you have to figure it out by ear, which if you don't have
your pedal settings and your calibration set it properly, can be pretty difficult. So maybe a solution for
this for future versions would be to put some kind of
display on the base station, with some numbers of what
signal you're sending from a minimum to a maximum number. So if you're really into effects, you already know how to use
a normal expression pedal, then for 100 bucks, I think
the Hot Hand is a good deal to check it out and see
if it gives you any sounds that you're craving. But if effects and
expressionating are new to you - is expressionating a word? I like it. If it's all new to you,
don't get the Hot Hand yet, get a standard expression pedal, see all the things you can do with one, you can do a lot of cool
stuff with just a pedal. And then from there, maybe get a Hot Hand, and see if it fills a niche for the sounds you're looking for. Bridge mutes are a cool
way to completely change the tone of your bass,
making it more muffled and kind of vintage-y sounding,
'cause this sound used to come from stock Fender bridge plates that had foam built into them. In the last gadget
review, we looked at this, the GruvGear Fump, which
failed to give even muting. Here's the E, and here's the G, totally uneven and same
problem if you flip it around, because so many people ask me about this. Now the G is super muted and
the E is a lot less muted, so this is no good, we don't like this. So today we're looking at
the Nordstrand NordyMute, which aims to be a higher quality plug and play muting solution. Let's check it out. Because the NordyMute pinches
the string on either side, rather than pressing up from the bottom like traditional foam,
supposedly it won't affect your strings' tuning
and intonation as much. So let's put it to the test. I recorded each open string
with no mute, the NordyMute and with some traditional foam
of pushing up on the strings. And as you can see, the
Nordy is still affecting the tuning a tiny bit, but it's less than the foam pressing up
from under the strings. My rating, translation, get it. I should have put this in
the utility gear section of this video, but it was so much fun to play with different meaning options, especially that weird thing, that it felt a little
more creativity boosting. So here we are. And at $40, that's kind of a
lot to ask for a bridge mute, especially since you can just use a sponge or a piece of foam, but
those options don't offer the ease of use and the longevity that the NordyMute offers. I don't know exactly how
long these things last, but I did contact Nordstrand, and they said they've been
making these for a few years, and they haven't heard
of any of them breaking. So this is really durable
neoprene foam rubber stuff. This is a really stiff foam, so it mutes pretty aggressively, and because of that, I wouldn't say this is the only bridge
mute you'll ever need, but you do get a lot of options. You can just put it on a little bit. You can put it on a little further, and get even more muting
because of the way that the slots are cut as
you go deeper into the slot. You do have to pick the spacing you want between the slots cut in the rubber. Luckily for me, this is the
19 millimeter spacing model and it fit all the basses I tried it on, I tried it on this, I
tried it on the Cirrus, I tried it on the Music
Man, it all worked. So all in all, it sounds
great, it's easy to use. And I like how it looks,
it's kind of cool. And you can even use it to
dampen the annoying click sound when you click like and
subscribe to Bass Buzz. All right, let's talk about it, it's the Pulse by SoundBrenner. It's a metronome, but you don't hear it, you feel it via the vibrating motor. So if you're getting ear fatigue from too much audio click track,
or you've got a whole band, you wanna sync up to a click, but you're not using an audio click track, SoundBrenner claims that this will make all your dreams come true. So it's hard to find a good
place to strap this thing, putting it on my fretting hand wrist felt like it disrupted my playing, putting it on the plucking hand wrist, means the straps rubbing against the bass, obviously putting it in the
mouth, not a great option. I think the best option would
be to use the body strap and attach it to your chest. But of course the body strap doesn't come with the unit by default. One issue I've read about with these is, some people have perceived
irregular pulses, i.e. not keeping perfect time, which is pretty important for a metronome. And you don't have to pay $100 to get irregular pulses, you
just buy your drummer a beer. Anyway, let's test how metronomic
this thing actually is. I recorded it for five minutes straight at 120 beats per minute, using an SM57 and this very high-tech mic stand. I ran three tests, the first
one sagged by 31 samples, which translates to about
0.6 milliseconds of delay, which is not bad after five minutes. The second test actually
got ahead by 11 samples, which is about 0.2 milliseconds. So for the third test, I
turned on the preserve rhythm on disconnect function in the app, which should really be
enabled by default I think, and that got me down to four samples late, which is pretty negligible. So I'd say the Pulse survived
this experiment pretty well, which is not to say you
couldn't have more issues with irregular pulses
in a stage environment. For example, I moved my
phone, which was running the app that pairs to
this around the house, and I was able to get some disconnects just by moving 20 or 30 feet away. My rating, translation, forget it. I really wanted to like this thing, it seems like a really cool idea, but I just don't see it
solving any meaningful problems for us bass players. Maybe if you're a drummer and you've already got too
much click in your ears, you don't wanna turn it
up, this could be useful, but I've never had that issue. And supposedly it can
help with just ear fatigue from listening to a
click from a long time, but I think you can get the same issue with a vibration-based solution, you just get vibration fatigue
instead of ear fatigue. It starts to feel really like annoying, just like buzzing on the
same part of your body for minute after minute. For at-home practicing, I think
this is actually a downgrade from a standard metronome. First of all, 'cause it cost $100, and a normal metronome is $20 or less, or a metronome app is free potentially. And there's no display on the unit, so if you want to see your BPM or do anything else interesting, you'd have to use the app anyway... so why not just use the free app? Another function of the Pulse
is to sync up multiple Pulses all through the same
DAW like Ableton Live, so you could have your whole
band using Pulses on stage, and theoretically be synced up. Here's the problem, in
the product demo video from SoundBrenner, if you freeze the video and take it frame-by-frame, you can see that there are frames
where some units are lit up and some units aren't. What that translates to is possibly two or three
milliseconds of delay between units, which, think
about your rhythm section, your drummer and your bass
player hearing the click a few milliseconds apart,
that could translate to a big impact on the feel of your song, whether it's live or in the studio. So that's my opinion,
but what do you think? How could the Pulse be a win? Is this like a good idea
that just needs some refining or is the whole idea of a
vibration-based metronome a wasted effort? Let me know what you
think in the comments. Next up is the Spark amp by Positive Grid. Bass players are always looking
for amps that are portable and affordable and good sounding, but most contenders don't
tick all those boxes, so let's see how the Spark does. My rating, translation, think about it. I'm really surprised that
thing is a 'think about it,' because after my experience
with the Blackstar last time, I thought for sure this
would be another, forget it, but it's actually got some cool features. It's a decent amp, it's a
decent multi-effects unit, and you can also use it as an interface to record your bass into your computer. The bass amp models in
here are pretty cool, and at low practice volumes, it sounds clean and undistorted, but obviously if you start
bumping the volume on this thing, it'll distort and compress
like any other tiny little amp. It's relatively noisy
compared to the other amps I've played with at this volume, check it out if I turn up the gain. Some major hiss going on. To use most of this amp's functions, you need to pair it
with the smartphone app from which you can control
the tone and the effects, and some of the other
features we'll talk about. And the controls are pretty responsive, if I move one of the knobs,
I'll move the gain knob, it moves pretty immediately as I'm moving my finger on
the screen, which is cool. One thing to be aware of in the app is a lot of the default bass
patches have a noise gate and a compressor turned on by default. This is not good, you should
turn off the noise gate, turn off the compressor for
most of your practicing, unless you really know what you're doing. Some of the other features I
found just didn't really work or they didn't work that
well for bass players. For example, the auto chords feature is supposed to listen to a
Spotify or YouTube track, and give you the chord
changes at the right time as the track plays. In reality, this is what happened when I tried it out on this
"Don't Stop Believin'" video, that the app suggested to me when I opened it up, the chords are completely off
sync and not with the song. I can imagine this would maybe work for like a contemporary
pop song with four chords recorded to a click track,
but anything other than that, definitely not gonna work. And there's this smart jam function where it will listen to
you play for a few bars and then give you a
drum beat and a bassline to go along with what you're playing. This really isn't that
useful for bass players, it did a pretty good job at picking up what notes I was playing when I fed it some easy to understand ideas. But then it plays this
crappy MIDI bassline with a drum beat, I'd rather
just use a drum machine, it's not really doing
anything that special. So at $300, the price
on this thing actually kind of checks out, it's an okay amp, it's an okay multi effects unit. It works as a digital audio interface and it comes with some recording software. But for the money you could
get a much better amp, I think the $200 Fender Rumble 40 is a better amp for $100 less, and then you could pocket that $100 or spend it on a multieffects unit or a digital audio interface if you actually need one of those things. So it's a nice little package,
but when you're buying an amp, especially if it's
gonna be your only amp, your priority is for it to be a good amp, not to be a bunch of other things. You don't need it to
blend smoothies for you and make your coffee, you
just need it to be an amp. And this thing is not the
best amp you can get for $300. I would only buy this if you practice at super, super low
volumes and you're willing to throw down even more
money when you need to buy a bigger amp later on to
actually play with people. There are a ton of cheap
wireless units on the market now, that allow you to just
plug one into your bass, one into your amp, and
then you're good to go, ready to practice, no cables. So let's see how they work. We're testing out two units today, the super cheap Getaria system and the more expensive
Xvive or Xvive system, however you pronounce it, Xvive. So these are both digital wireless systems running at 2.4 gigahertz, and they both have lithium
ion rechargeable batteries, which seem great, I've
used them both for hours without charging them
and they're holding up. They both feel kind of
cheap and plasticky like, in a way that doesn't
feel great quality-wise, but the tone checks out on both of these, I've played them both quite a bit. And I can't hear a difference
between my cabled tone, and the wireless tone. So what we're really concerned
with here is latency. Latency is the time lag between
when you actually perform or like pluck a string and
when the sound comes out of your amp or goes into
your recording software. So I ran a couple of latency tests to see how these stack up
compared to a good old cable. First, I sent a metronome
click through either a one foot cable, a 30
foot cable, the Getaria or the Xvive. Then I'm looking at
how far behind the beat the resulting click gets recorded, which measures the latency of
that particular signal path. Both cables had basically no latency, the more expensive Xvive
had nine samples of delay, which is about 0.2 milliseconds, and the cheaper Getaria
had 25 samples of delay, which is about 0.5 milliseconds late. And that might not sound like much, but just listen to the cable track and the Getaria track together,
there's a noticeable lag. This translated to bass playing as well, I tested a short slap
riff, and you can hear a noticeable phasing
effect if you listened to the track together
with the cabled version. So here's the cable version solo. And here's the cabled control along with the Xvive wireless signal. And the here's the Getaria, along with its cable control,
it's even worse with phasing. My rating, translation, forget it. Don't get these. The reason I ran these latency
tests in the first place is because, when I first
plugged into these units, I subjectively felt like
there might be some latency, and it wasn't obvious enough to go, "Oh, something is wrong." It was like just enough to make me feel like I was going crazy. I noticed myself feeling
uninspired by the sound because of the later response. And so my concern is if you're not an experienced bass player or
musician using one of these, you might feel that effect
of feeling like uninspired and like something's a
little off, but not be able to trace it back to the latency
from your wireless unit. So let's break this down in terms of performance or practice. For performance, I would never ever trust a wireless as cheap as
either of these on stage. I've had dropout issues even with more expensive
2.4GHz wireless systems, because it's a really
competitive frequency band, there's a lot of stuff
happening at 2.4GHz, including a lot of WiFi networks. So if you're gonna go wireless on stage, you need to do a lot more research and you're gonna need to
invest a lot more money to get a reliable system,
because if you've ever used a wireless on stage and
had the bass dropout, which I have experienced
a number of times, it's very unpleasant. And after that happens once, you will never fully trust
your wireless system again, and you'll feel tense
when you're using it, just knowing that there's any second, the bass can vanish. So the only reason the left
to get something like this would be for practicing. So if you think something like this would get you to practice more
because it's more convenient and you have some money to
burn, then maybe go for it. But as a teacher, I'm
still really concerned about the latency. I wouldn't want somebody
to learn their instrument with latency built into it, because it could significantly affect your sense of rhythm and time when you go on to try to play
with people in the future. And I should stress, it's not really that either of these
companies did anything wrong. They worked about as well
as I'd think they would based on the price and the design, and the Xvive is definitely
nicer than the Getaria, which makes sense, because
it's more expensive, it had less latency and it also has some channel selecting
options, which is nice. But it just that the whole
idea of a cheap wireless for low stakes playing
doesn't really hold water for learning purposes
or for money purposes. Okay, let's look at the
RoadieBass Auto Tuner. No, not that kind of auto tune, this thing is supposed to take
the guesswork out of tuning. You just stick it on your
knob, pluck a string, and it'll detect your pitch and to turn the knob
automatically with its motor. So let's see how it works. First, let's run a speed test and see who's faster, man or machine. All right, so the Roadie
is quite a bit slower than using a normal tuner, at least if you have
some tuner experience. I was also concerned about the accuracy, I didn't really feel like
I was in tune after that. So we're going to check it
against my Peterson Strobe Tuner, which is kind of the
gold standard of tuners. So after tuning with the
Roadie, the E string is flat, you can see the display
is going to the left, that's what in tune looks like. A string is also flat,
D string is also flat, G string was also flat. So that's 0 for 4 for the Roadie, My rating, translation, forget it. Who needs this ****ing thing? It's so slow, it's so much
slower than a normal tuner, it's $150, which is more than I paid for my amazing Peterson Strobe Tuner, and the company only claims a tuning accuracy within 2
cents, which is not that good. Even a cheap Korg tuner will
get you within one cent. If you wanna see some more
in-depth tests with this gadget, Jayme Lewis did a really
good video review on this. He did a bunch more cool tests,
so you can check that out. The link in the description. Not only have I found this
thing to be slow and unreliable, but as a teacher, I
actually think it's bad for you to let something like
this do your tuning for you, because tuning your bass is a skill that you wanna be developing over time, 'cause it's useful, and
it's not actually that hard to tune your bass, I
teach you how to do it in the very first lesson of
my Beginner to Badass course, which you can check out
over at Bassbuzz.com. And for the money, the cost
of this thing blows my mind. You could get a really good
Korg tuner for 20 bucks, and then you've got 130
more dollars to spare. You could get a couple bass lessons and have a professional show
you how to use your tuner, and you could get really,
really good at it in one day, and not need something like this. Okay, let's look at the Guitar Glove or the Musician's Practice Glove, it seems to be called both. There are a lot of reasons
you might wanna wear a glove when playing. Apparently they can help
with excessive sweating, they can help with nerve
issues, focal dystonia, they can help with arthritis pain, they can help with nickel allergies. But any old glove would
help with those issues, so why should you spend 10
bucks on this musicians' glove? Let's check it out. My rating, translation, shortlist it. I was actually surprised with
how much I liked this thing. A cheapo glove does work okay, but there are a few ways
that this thing is better. It has better moisture wicking. I wore both of these on
a hot day for a while, and this hand was a lot less sweaty. And the weave of the nylon or whatever is a lot tighter and cleaner, whereas normal kind of cheapo
winter gloves like this are more fuzzy, and I liked
the cleaner feel for playing. And also the durability seems a lot better than your average cheapo glove. These are 10 bucks and the company says they could last anywhere
from 20 to 50 hours. I've only used this one for a few hours, but it hasn't worn out at all. Whereas my cheapo glove, which are usually $3 to $5 or whatever, I doubt you get more than 10
hours out of one of these. And this one already has
a hole in it from use on previous cold gigs. If you're a person with
any of those issues I mentioned earlier, I would
actually call this a get it. But for the average person, I don't think you need to wear
a glove while you're playing. If you're a beginner and you're trying to avoid raw skin or
calluses or something, just play a bunch and
your skin will get tough and you won't have to worry about it. And if you like the feel of less friction, you have some other options,
like something like Fast Fret, that you just rub on the
strings and it coats them a bit, or you can try a coated
string like Elixirs. I've heard some people like wearing gloves just to cut down on string
noise from round wound strings making little zingy noises
when they're sliding around. I personally don't think
you should wear a glove just to get rid of that sound
because most of those sounds only happen here, acoustically
going from this side of the string into your ear, but they don't come out of your amp, so they don't really matter
in a performance context. I've mostly worn gloves
just for cold gigs, which this wouldn't be
the right glove for. So if you have more
glove experience than me, let me know what you think
in the comments below. just make sure you don't buy one of these, it's not the right kind of bass. So you're learning on
an acoustic bass guitar and there's nowhere to rest
your thumb, which sucks. You can kind of fake it on
the edge of the fingerboard, but it doesn't work that well. Enter the Bonk No-Drill
Acoustic Bass Thumbrest, you just stick this thing on
the side of your sound hole, tighten it up with a screwdriver, and you've got somewhere
to put your thumb. My rating, translation, get it. If you have an acoustic
bass guitar, get this thing, it's 15 bucks, it's
really easy to install. I can do it, so it must be easy. And it really changes the game with how you can place your plucking hand, and it's just really cool. And if you're a crafty woodworker person, you could probably make this yourself, but it's only 15 bucks, and you can save yourself some time. Shortest gadget review yet! FORREST: "That's all I
have to bass about that." If you've ever come home from a gig with a sound of ringing
cymbals in your ears, you've experienced the pleasure
of damaging your hearing. Wearing some kind of ear protection is crucial for keeping your ears working through your whole music career. So we're gonna look at
a few different options from the super cheap to the
slightly more expensive, to the very more expensive. So rather than doing a demo, 'cause how do I even
demo your plugs for you? I just wanna share a couple of quick hearing
loss horror stories. So I played in a band
with somebody for years, who had been playing loud
music for over 40 years with no hearing protection. Not only was this person basically half deaf in conversation, but their instruments tone had
gotten progressively brighter and nastier over time to
compensate for the high end loss in their hearing, so to my undamaged ears, the tone just sounded awful. And I know another guy who
is a really great bass player who has tinnitus, and the
ringing from the tinnitus makes it unpleasant to
hear high frequency sound, so because of that, he rolls all the high
frequency sound off of his amp, so it sounds all dark and muffle-y, which isn't actually the tone he wants. He's like taking
beautiful solos and stuff, but they all sound muffle-y. So it's just kind of tragic. So between the deafness and the bad tone, the bad tone especially,
I hope this is enough to scare you straight into
wearing hearing protection. And I'm sure more stories
will be told in the comments. So if you have a hearing loss
or hearing protection story to share, please share it below, 'cause we should all be
protecting our ears on stage no matter what instrument we play. So we're going to look
at three options here. First up, are the standard foam earplugs, which are super cheap, and
these aren't the best option because they make everything
sound really muffle-y, as you know, if you've ever worn these, but they're still useful to
bring with you on the road if you're sharing a hotel room with a snoring guitar
player, for instance. The next step up is some
kind of flange to your plug like these Hearos, or Etymotic
Research makes these too. These are a lot less
muffle-y than the foam, and they're pretty good. I use these as my main gigging earplugs for a number of years. But you're still not gonna get totally accurate frequency response 'cause they're not molded to your ear, but there are less than $10 a pair and they're way better than foam. The top tier of hearing protection will be some kind of custom molded plug like I have here from Sensaphonics. These are a lot more expensive,
I paid like $250 for these, including the audiologist
appointment to get fitted. But if you want accurate
frequency response, meaning stuff sounds the way
it actually sounds to you, then this is the only way to go. And what's cool about these
is you can pop the filters in and out and swap them
with different filters that filter different amounts of sound. My rating for ear
protection, can you guess? Translation, get it, get it,
get it, get it, get it, get it. Which option is best for you? Kind of depends on some things. Obviously the best sound quality is gonna be something custom
molded like the Sensaphonics. But they're $250 or somewhere thereabouts. Whereas these Hearos or
Etymotic Research flange plugs are like $8, $10 or something. So if you are making money from gigging, and you want really good sound quality, and you trust yourself not to
lose small valuable things, then you should look into getting these. Cause when I first got
these, I was just blown away. I was like, "Oh, I don't feel
like I'm wearing earplugs, everything just sounds quieter." But it still sounds like the
way I expect it to sound. So these are awesome. But if you are not a professional musician or you think you're gonna lose them because that would suck,
then just get flanged plugs, they're super cheap,
they work pretty well, and they'll still protect your ears. And earplugs aren't just
for playing music either they can also be used to manage
gear acquisition syndrome. [GIRLFRIEND] Babe weren't
you gonna take out the trash? [JOSH] Huh??? [GIRLFRIEND] You're not
buying gear again, are you? [JOSH] Sorry babe, can't hear you!
