Struggling with Spider Jam set-up

[humberhawk2]

Still struggling to configure my Spider Jam. I'd have to agree that the manual isn't very good afterall. How to do certain key features isn't explained - or I can't recognise them as the explanation I'm looking for. Too much hipster-ish "Hey guys, this r-o-c-k-s!" and little in the way of detailed step-by-step instructions about how you actually set things up so that you can do it.

       Right now I'm trying to figure out how you jam along to backing tracks you've put in there yourself. I've a few commercial blues backing tracks that I've converted to the required 16-bit 44100 mono WAVs and transferred via SD card to the Spider Jam. So far so good; that worked fine and they're all visible under the 'Recording' tab. But the only way I can play them is to do an actual recording. I don't want to make a recording, I just want to play along to them (sometimes Looped) just like Line6's already-installed backing tracks. Is that possible? Or is that a gap in the Spider Jam's capabilities? Also - worryingly - the recording seems to be just the backing track with no sign of my guitar!

      Same lack-of-instruction for setting up the FBV Express pedal; I just get the previous owner's A, B, C and D choices and can't figure out how to change them.

      Please don't direct me to YouTube. I might be looking in the wrong place, or simply haven't looked enough, but all I've found so far on YouTube is people demonstrating the features in use, rather than what knobs you twiddle and what buttons you press and what options you select in order to get to the point of actually using them.

[gary9605]

This is the way to you select and have the WAV files play back.

Press Drums\Song button

Using the "directional 4 arrow button" ........ slide over to SD in the display window

Rotate the "wheel" to display the songs you have on your SD card

When you locate the desired song.......again, use the "4 arrow button" and press LEFT arrow

Should see the file loading in display window

Now press the INPUT \ LEVEL button

using the 4 arrow key button, you can select and adjust the volume of the play back..........for your WAV files, it will be the last (far right) option labeled Mic\Aux\Wav

Hit the PLAY button

 

should work my friend

 

 

[humberhawk2]

OK... just so that I'm clear. The WAVs I've already loaded into the Spider Jam (SD card removed) will only work in recording mode. But if I don't remove the SD card and instead access a WAV that's still on the SD card (in the manner you've described) then I will be able to use that WAV as a jam-along track, no recording necessary? Is that what happens?

Edited September 20, 2018 by humberhawk2
syntax

[gary9605]

Sorry,  i'm not sure about "recording" methods.....never tried it.  But to just use the SD songs as play along.......then......

SD card has to still be loaded!!!!

 

Should work.........its the way i access and play along with songs I've transferred over to the SD card.

 

Hope this got you where you wanted to be!

[humberhawk2]

Right. Got it. In fact I'll probably never use the recording facility either, I was just forced into it by what the Spider Jam was allowing me to do.

Now I need to figure out how to make the FBV pedal select the tones I want rather than giving me the ones it is already set up with. But more on that later once I'm OK with this WAVs-on-a-card business..!

I'm writing up everything as I go to compile my own notes on how you configure things, a sort of "Spider Jam For Dummies' if you like (because that's exactly what I need).

[humberhawk2]

My final update on this matter (the WAV playback thing: I now understand what's going on). Doing it my way or gary9605's way results in the same thing: the WAV loads into the Spider Jam's onboard memory and stays there (even when you remove the SD card). You find it under Recordings and jam along to it just by pressing Start/Stop (which is what I wanted). If you want to record over it, press Rec instead.

      I was leading myself astray by thinking that it would behave the same way as my Fender G-Dec amp, but it doesn't. With an SD card in the Fender G-Dec amp, you can select any backing track on the SD card and it can be played from there. The WAV never has to be loaded into the amp and thus the amp's memory buffer is never filled (though you can make a recording which can be saved on the amp). 

      The Spider Jam works the other way round: all backing tracks on your SD card must first be loaded into the amp's memory buffer before you can do anything with them... and they stay there unless you delete them. Now I see why the manual recommends you always export stuff back to an SD card at every opportunity - the amp's memory very quickly fills up. No such problem with the G-Dec; the backing track WAVs stay on the SD card and of course you can have a great many. That would be a nice option to have on the Spider Jam.