New Line6 FAQ page

Line6Andy has posted a new set of FAQs to the Documents tab of the Spider Jam forum. These answer a lot of the basic questions that crop up time and time again and were badly needed. Well done Andy!

Faking multitracking on a Spider Jam

If you use SAVE REC MIX AS WAV TO CARD on a Spider Jam or JM4 Looper, all your tracks are mixed down into a single, mono track. If you subsequently want to edit individual tracks, you are stuck - unless...

There is another way that works very well with Mac GarageBand (but should work with any digital audio editor) and gives the Spider Jam, a multi-tracking facility too.

If you make a recording on the Spider Jam - say Guitar, backing track, Mic or lead, bass, drums, you can save the three tracks as individual WAV files by doing the SAVE REC MIX AS WAV TO CARD thing THREE times with the appropriate PLAYBACK levels turned full up and off eg

Track 1
Song/Drums 100%
Guitar 0%
Mic/Aux/Wav 0%

Track 2
Song/Drums 0%
Guitar 100%
Mic/Aux/Wav 0%

Track 3
Song/Drums 0%
Guitar 0%
Mic/Aux/Wav 100%

Then if you drag these three WAV tracks into separate tracks in GarageBand (or import them as individual tracks), you will have a three track recording in (near) perfect sync. I say 'near' because there might be a miniscule difference in phase, but it's not audible.

You can then edit each track for level, eg, add effects and you can add further tracks by the direct injection method (instrument into USB box). You could do a fade out at the end or, in GarageBand, add one of drum endings on another track and cross fade from the SJ drums to the GB drums.

Learning curve

When the box arrives in the post, I can never wait to get something open, hooked up and going within minutes. For guitars, effects and most amps there is rarely anything that can go wrong and as for manuals - meh, who needs them!

If you do this with a Spider Jam or JM4 Looper, you could be disappointed at the first switch on. Both devices are complicated and have fairly steep learning curves, if you want to get the best out of them. Unfortunately, the manuals shipped with these products are only helpful up to a point. Both have additional Advanced User Guides and FAQs which are only available as downloads from http://line6.com/support/manuals/ - even there, it is not obvious where to get them. Spider Jam is under the Spider lll heading and the JM4 under Stompbox Modelers.

Take the trouble to read BOTH these manuals and you will be rewarded many times over!

TC-HELICON Voicetone Harmony-G

I've done a review of this fantastic little vocal harmony pedal over at mymojo.us. It works very well with a Spider Jam going into the mic and guitar channels simultaneously.

Spider Jam and JM4 Looper review

I've just done a comparative review of the Spider Jam and JM4 Looper for mymojo.us. This is a great new site for guitarists!

Spider Jam/JM4 Looper Tone Sharing

There is no provision to saves tones to SD card in a Spider Jam or JM4 Looper however, tones are saved with .JAM files if you have RECORDINGS SET TONE switched to ON in the SETTINGS/TONE menu. If you make a short recording (5 seconds seems to be the shortest possible) and save that to SD card, the tone settings for that loop will be reinstated when reloaded and can be saved as a custom preset tone. A neat way to get round the shortcoming.

I am hosting a repository of shared tones on this site at http://www.joesjamblog.com/tones.html where you will also find full instructions for saving tones and sharing them.

Firmware updating steps

The firmware updating process still seems to confuse a lot of people so I've expanded the firmware updating section to a full, step by step tutorial highlighting some of the problems that crop up from time to time and suggesting some resolutions.