Peavey Midi Cyberbass

well, sometime after my earlier review, I found another peavey on e-bait, this time sans adaptor box & cable. I figured that at least I would have the bulk of the thing (most of the electronics are in the back of the instrument- the adaptor box is quite simple) & maybe use it for spares.
three surprises- first, the e-bait instrument has the older "midibase" chipset; my original instrument was a cyberbass disguised as a midibase.
second, it plays /much/ better than the other one- nicer action, better neck profile.
third- the serial numbers of the two are three digits apart, despite one of them being imported from the US (by me) at least ten years after the other.

so- I'm here to revise my opinion on the build-quality of the bass-part of the thing; this second one is actually a nice bass in it's own right, & (through an old orange OR120 valve head) sounds like a proper bass.

have gigged it now, & it behaved impeccably.

I wrote to peavey via their "support" address on the website, explaining the circumstances by which I ended up with these two basses, one adaptor box, all that. I have so far waited ten weeks for a reply, & still nothing. there's pretty much nothing for these instruments by way of support, but I don't want mine to be shut in their cases doing nothing just because I'm afraid they'll break. I'd rather one of them packed up on-stage, doing what it was supposed to do.

early 90s- this is actually a midibase (that's how peavey spelt it, & why they later had to relaunch it as the cyberbass) though it has been retrofitted with the cyberbass chipset. this means it has more memories & a bunch of other stuff. the bends are better. it can emulate fretless, sort of. there's a "tapping" mode where it outputs notes without any right-hand plucking.
mine came with a peavey bass-synth module which I haven't tried yet- it doesn't seem to work too well plugged into an emu sampler but has been fine with my other emu stuff, including a pk6 keyboard. mostly using it with piano & guitar sounds, so the bass is triggering arpeggio riffs. I also like the sound of the bass itself- smooth, slightly like a fretless, though the electrics are basic & emg's always lack a little authority for me.
88 frets! that always raises eyebrows.... & the strain-gauges in the bridge, to measure pitch-bend... genius!

nice sound from the onboard pickups but see notes above. otherwise, the world is your oyster!
not used it live yet, but will do once I get used to the technique required.
it requires what peavey call in the op-manual "commitment"- you really have to be careful not to knock or rest against adjacent strings, & you must fret each note squarely & decisively. even then, a bit of tarnish or condensation will cause a tracking error.
that said, the lack of latency (especially if you've used a regular midi-pickup on a guitar or bass) is amazing.

no complaints about build quality, though one has to keep the strings & frets meticulously clean on these things so that the triggering is accurate. the midi-dynamics pickups (by the bridge) are only responsible for note-on/off & velocity, & they work fine. occasional tweak is all.
the neck is super-shallow whilst still being a comfortable width to allow bends & so forth- a fast bass. feels/looks a bit plasticky, but then this reflects it's high-tech purpose- it ain't a '59 fender after all.

well, this one's at least 10. seems to be fine so far. we'll revisit this after a few gigs.... I wonder about all those socketed chips in the back of this thing, & what I'd do if the special cable broke.....

the bass itself is standard peavey- not bad, not good. it works & none of it is exactly dropping off.... but long-term, there might be technical issues that one wouldn't be able to get a luthier to fix. how would you, for instance, refret one of these?

um... haven't tried peavey for support yet. the guy I bought it from told me most of what I needed to know, & I figured out the rest. (for instance, a midibase doesn't have enough frets for some of the higher functions of the cyberbass, & it's not documented how to access these on the version I've got.... to save a patch, you have to bend the A string across to contact a fret under the adjacent E string, otherwise you are stuck in midi-output-channel-select mode.

15 other basses- all sorts of stuff- ricks, fenders, ibanez.
5 guitars- strats, ricky 12...
about 27 keyboards- moog, mellotron, emu, sci, roland, korg, yamaha
orange or120 head
dynacord 400w head
ashdown (prototype) 4x10 cab

if the peavey got nicked, I'd watch out for it on e-bay, advertised "as-is" & sans controller box, unless the thief knew to steal that too. it's a bit specialist... takes a bit of technique adaptation... I think the novelty will wear off eventually. a fretless midi bass would be another matter- that I would guard more carefully.

After having owned several pitch-to-voltage bass controllers, the Peavey Cyberbass is truly an answer to prayer. Unlike its predecessors, the Cyberbass uses electrical and mechanical information to create midi transmission much like your average keyboard. The pickups could use some work and the workmanship is typical Peavey but the ability to finally have a bass-to-midi converter that actually works is worth putting up with the features lacking.

The sound of the bass is useable for most gigs if you have enough gain and EQ in the preamp of your rig. I'm currently using 2 systems live. One for bass sound and a small, stereo PA for the midi sound. There is too much midi noise in the bass sound for studio work, a problem which could possibly be solved with other pickups but the bridge pickup is intergral to the midi. The midi sound is dependent on what your midi sound source is. I'm currently using a rack filled with synths and sample players from Korg, Roland, & Peavey.

Typical Peavey. More attention paid to function than form. I don't know why they put the best bass controller in such an amateurish feeling bass.

I use this unit all the time without problems.

Peavey's the best. But this thing's been out of production for so long, the number of people who actually know anything about it is getting fewer all the time.

Peavey really screwed the pooch when they stopped making this thing. It's the only bass controller that's actually worked. I don't know if the market wasn't big enough or they just thought it was too hard to make, but they're really missing the boat here.

Year : 1995 (USA)

This is a Midi bass with a interface that you really can midi with a lot of Synths that are in the market . You just have to pay atention in some things like the Synth's pitch wheel and others things. Peavey offers in the market some Synth modules to conect to Cyberbass, but for they are very bad sound quality. I love to midi the bass into my analog SE1 (Synth bass sounds) an bellieve me you can play all those great synth bass licks with no delays, is just like you play an eletric bass, you can bend, slide, hammer-on, slap or tap that the Cyberbass will answer like it be a keyborad !

We have the normal eletric bass sound in one output and the midi bass in another one, the eletric bass sound is not so good, but the midi sound depends of the module that you are using. Both sounds cand be mixed and you'll have a "stereo" eletric/midi sound.

I think that's this instrument just have be used for midi purposes, if you want a eletric bass sound I think you should use your Fenders and others top quality basses. The action must be the calibrated in function for the digital pick ups, you can set up the sensibility and the pitch wheel (0/24 semitones).

This is a very fragile instrument, the eletronic components are very sensitive and I think it must not be used at live situations.

I have mail Peavey two times and they answer me with no problem, but the Cyberbass is out of production so I think that one day I'll have some troubles.

Really this is the best midi bass ever made, no delays great sensibility and infinite possibilities of sound. You can do that great synth bass groove just playing a normal eletric bass with slides, hammer-ons, bends, slaps and tap , but it's a very fragile wepon, you must take care of it like a baby and buy a good sound module !