odd but interesting set up... you be the judge...

[crother316]

Hi i have been looking at a band whose bass player has a very interesting set up. for instruments he has a dave smith synth, an akai synth/workstation, a roland sp-404sx sampler, and a 4 string bass. for amps he has an ampeg 6x10 and he also uses a 2x18 cab (unknown). he gets massive bass tone from this set up and i would like to do somthing similar. but how would you go about setting this up? I attached a pic of the station set up. let me know what you think? thanks!

[JimmyM]

Shouldn't be hard. Get whatever synths you want and a small mixing board, plug the synths into the mixer, run the out of the mixer to your amplification.

[staindbass]

no pics of the 18's ?

[crother316]

Originally Posted by staindbass

no pics of the 18's ?

its hard to tell what he hass on his rack mount, but this is probly the best picture of the 18's

[BassmanPaul]

First of all accumulate lots of money then .....

[crother316]

True! this is an expensive rig for sure! so you would plug your synths and bass into a small 4-8 input mixer and then direct that out to the 6x10 and then direct that signal out to the powered 2x18??? is there going to be signal problems with that or somthing?? what are the pros and cons of doing it this way?

[crother316]

any ideas? how would you direct out to the p.a. then?

[murphy]

Don't forget a good poweramp....or a bass amp

[staindbass]

you would connect to the pa with a direct out from the mixing board. probably one line out for each instrument.

[jungleheat]

With that many speakers, and with 2 different sources (bass and keys) it would probably be best to have a separate head for each. That way the sound will be less "jumbled" than trying to get everything through one head. So a head and cab or set of cabs for bass and a mixer, head (or power amp) and cab or set of cabs for keys. For the keys you would run a DI (2 in stereo if you're lucky) from the mixer to the PA. All done.

[turunturun]

To set this up the best way it should be mentioned that there are three kinds of signal to pay attention to (four if you count speaker level): instrument level, line level, and mic level. Instrument and line do not use the same kind of cable (hi-z and low-z respectively). Mic and line level signals use the same kind of cable but typically go to different types of inputs on a mixing board. A mic signal is quiet enough to require amplification...hence mic preamps....and a preamps job is to boost the signal as cleanly as possible up to line level. Synths always output signal at line level.
SO....with that background....
As jungleheat mentioned, two heads are better than one, but a single could possibly work if you are only using one of the three sources at once. I first set something like this up and ran loops of the synth while playing the bass at the same time into a single amp and it was a garbled mess. So I split it up into two heads and cabs and it was much clearer.

The simplest way:
One bass, one synth, one amp (with effects loop) & you'll need a mixer:
Run bass into amp input (instrument level)
Run send of amp effects loop (line level) into mixer
Run output of keyboard (line level) into mixer
Run output of mixer (line level) into amp return, and insert house's DI box here if they have one/need one.

The other simple way:
One bass, one synth, one amp (no effects loop) & you'll need an ABY box and an Xamp:
Run bass into input 'A' of an ABY switcher (whilwind makes one for about $60...these have two inputs, one output, and a switch to select either A/B and a switch to select "Both")
Run keyboard into Radial Xamp box or similar (takes line level down to instrument level cleanly). Adjust output pad to match signal level of bass so keyboard isn't louder or quieter than bass
Run output of Xamp into 'B' of ABY box
Set ABY box to "Both"
Run output of ABY into amp input, and insert house DI here if needed

The better way:
One bass, one synth, two amps & you might need an Xamp box:
Bass goes to its own amp and keyboard goes to its own amp.
Depending on the type of amp used for the keyboard:
If amp only has instrument input...use an Xamp for best sound quality (if you plug a line level source up to an amps instrument input it sounds like crap)
If amp has effects loop, plug keyboard into amps return - effects loops are at line level and you are basically bypassing the amps preamp and using only the power amp.
If amp is an actual keyboard amp (like Roland's KC500) it probably has line level inputs so you just go straight in from keyboard.
If using house DI's in this scenario, you will need two because the signals never get merged. But they usually have several.

So moral to the story, if the guys rig sounds killer then he is also probably being mindful of plugging up the right kind of signal to the right kind of input and being mindful of what is at line level, mic level, and instr level. My guess is he is running a bass into one amp&cab, and running the DSI synth, sampler and Akai box into a mixer and sending the mixer out to a power amp into the other cab. It looks like he is using a DJ style 4 channel mixer with a crossfader in the first photo....just under the yellow DSI Mopho (tasty piece of kit that one is BTW). If he needs them, he would insert one direct box between his bass to amp run (after any effects, and in the effects loop if he has one) and another between the mixer output and power amp input.

[greenboy]

The easiest way to deal with keyboards is to use a mixer, obviously, before final amplification. But electric basses, especially passives, do a lot better with a DI to mate with a mixer. Feeding a mixer-level output into an MI head sometimes works well depending on mixer and head, but not always, because heads are really designed for way lower input signals.

A lot of bass-playin' synth/keys doublers use a rackmount preamp for their bass, going to the mixer, then the mixer feeds a pro power amp rather than a head.