Sonuus B2M Universal Bass to MIDI Converter (PC/Mac)

I have been needing a synth bass effect for some time, and as the Akia deep impact is no longer made, I thought I'd look for an alternative solution; I came up with having a midi bass and synth module on stage : brilliant! Hundreds of bass sounds in one box, triggered from my bass. However, it would seem, that no-one makes a reasonably priced midi bass and with the Roland V-Bass system being quite expensive, I thought I'd give this a go. I had high hopes for the B2M, the manual is simple and makes the product sound very usable ,as long as you follow some simple tips - damped notes, play near the neck, play single notes etc. I hooked it up to a Korg 01/w/fd synth and started to play.......Yes, it triggers the keyboard, however, even with a finely tuned bass, I found the keyboard notes could be a semi-tone out or would play notes an octaves higher. Dampening the strings help this slightly. The next problem is the tracking, which is woefull. Playing anything faster than a single long note results in erratic and random results. The latency is also poor, even playing on a two octave bass at the high end of a G, the delay was obvious. For me as a live bassist this has no use whatsoever and is being returned. For a recording musician I see little use either, unless you are doing step recording and really dont want to play a keyboard that is. The V-Bass may be ten times more expensive, but, there is a good reason for this! Perhaps at this price I expect too much?

I'm lucky enough to own not one but three of the peavey midibase (sic) which uses special split frets & a small computer to generate accurate, lag-free polyphonic midi data, most of the time. if you keep the strings & frets clean. I use wd40.
but just occasionally, this pointy white designed-in-the-80s bass is just so wrong-looking that I want to use a different bass, & so I might reach for a vintage rickenbacker or fender. I don't want to spoil their looks with a GK2B set or be tethered to an axon converter, no matter that these things are reasonably good at what they do.

so- enter the B2M.
I read a lot about this thing before buying it. I also have the experience of playing the peavey, & of playing both basses & guitars with "regular" hexaphonic pickups & converters.
the thing to remember first about the B2M (& I suppose, the guitar version) is that it works the same way, but is monophonic.

the latency feels quite low, better than I remember the axon being, but you'll still have to play slightly ahead of the beat or else use sounds with slow attacks.
it only does midi channel 1, which is a nuisance. I couldn't tell if it was generating velocity data either. I suspect not.

you need to articulate every note cleanly & precisely- no carelessly dragging your finger (either hand) on the string. this doesn't mean you can't play legato, but it does mean you have to be careful. probably more than you're used to.
I found the B2M behaved best with some top rolled off (the odd accidental string noise is "quieter" to the converter then, & it might ignore it.) also, play somewhere close to the end of the neck- it seems to prefer a strong fundamental & gets confused by too many partials. for this reason, if you have two pickups, use the neck one.

of course, if you find that all this interferes too much with using your "clean" sound blended with a synth, then you'll need to arrange to feed the B2M from a split of your signal, & via an eq pedal or similar.

as regards the choice of midi sound- it's absolutely vital that you set your midi module to respond to pitchbend correctly.
set a limit of +/- 2 semitones, or else the thing will always feel like it's not tracking.
stick to sounds that work with microtonal variations in pitch, i.e. not pianos or organs.
the sounds I found worked best were synth lead sounds & samples of instruments like cellos, violins, brass- where the pitch need not be exact.
MOST important of all- set your synth module to play monophonically. you'll find there are a lot fewer false triggers & bad notes.

not bad for the price. if you need a midi/bass solution for your stadium gig, get one of the peaveys or the modern equivalent (steve chick is back in business). if you just want a way to get simple lines from an instrument you can actually play, that isn't a keyboard, into your sequencer & you can fix any mistakes afterwards, this could be just the ticket. it's good enough for live use, I'd say, once you've got into the right habits with it.
duncan.