Drop Tuning Issues (Bass Custom Tuning-A220)

[tthompson79]

Hey Everyone,

 

I have run into an issue that I could use some guidance on. Certain bands that drop tune like Mudvayne, Breaking Benjamin and Parkway Drive use custom A220 tuning. I have put heavy strings on to drop down. Some songs for other tuning works but A220 on the E string will tune down to about 5-7 within tune then bounces to 999.

 

From there it wont tune down. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!

[firekorn]

Can you indicate on which songs does it happen? The tuning it should be in? What tuning is your bass in?

[tthompson79]

Sorry for the delay, I am having issues with A440 also: Unearth "Big Bear & the hour of Chaos", Oh Sleeper: all; songs, Breaking Benjamin: "Before the dawn", I will not bow, the diary of Jane, Chevelle: "Send the pain below". To name a few.

[AMOlson]

I have the same issue ... any time I try to tune all the way down to B it won't go. Dimmu Borgir is the primary offender for me. I've tried it on both of my 4 string basses and my 5 string. Still no luck. This is on a PC.

 

String diameters are 110, 115; and 135. All active pickups and I've tried it straight from the basses as well as through an amp to deal with impedance issues. My guess is that Rocksmith just does NOT like that 31 and change frequency and gets confused. Of course if it can't find it in tuning, it's probably not going to find it playing, so I keep going back and hoping, but no luck.

[Khaaoos]

have you tried recalibration? or increasing the cable gain?

[AMOlson]

Tried recalibration, tweaking the eq settings, deliberately miscalibrating (for the heck of it) and still no dice. I can get it to register down to about +30ish and then anything lower registers as +999.

 

I'd originally thought it was because of the active output of the basses I use, but I get the same issue with the Audio Out on my amp, a little Warwick combo. I've tried going straight from the bass to the computer ... no luck there either.

 

Only other thing I might try is turning up the combo amp, but that would mean some time when I have few neighbors and my wife isn't asleep upstairs. I'm thinking Progenies of the Great Apocalypse at high volume while either is trying to sleep would not endear me to either neighbors or spouse.

[albatross213]

So, the background is that Rocksmith deliberately made it so that notes below C1 don't get detected (and consequently the overtones get detected instead, so the game "sees" the octave above rather than the actual note, which is why you get +999 as you get closer). The A220 fix is made so that the game sees notes like B0 as B1 instead (but because of the tuning frequency it's actually B0). I haven't had any reason to go below yet (and I doubt I could go much more than a semitone below), but the game detects Ab0 (at ~26 Hz) just fine most of the time provided that things have been done correctly with the tuning.

 

So, on bass that has a tuning frequency of A440 and notes of B0 or below just flat out will not work. If this happens it can be fixed by importing in the toolkit and changing the relative tuning (use the "Low Bass Tuning Fix" in the "Packer/Unpacker" tab of the toolkit OR add 12 to each number in the tuning and set the frequency to A220).

 

When the tuning frequency is A220 but still doesn't work, it may be that the low tuning fix was applied improperly (whether by hand or by an old version of the toolkit). I'm not sure what the fix for this would be, but I'd guess that manually entering the appropriate tuning in the toolkit would be the most surefire way to do it.

 

@@AMOlson - since you mentioned Progenies of the Great Apocalypse in particular, I checked that one and the tuning frequency is A440 on the bass. As I've said above, that just flat out will not work for this tuning. If you want to check other songs that should have things entered correctly so you can tune to BEAD, try this or this or this or this.

[AMOlson]

Thank you albatross213. I actually have a 5 string (fretless) and it sounded great on Flash Light. Not that *I* did, but the sound was amazing. I'd seen the information about the A220, but never figured out what was going on.

 

Although I'm thinking I'll use my 'drop tuning' 4 for the others. Using a fretless for death metal is weird, sorta like Captain Crunch and Guiness for breakfast.