80s synth bass sound

[Chad Bennett]

Well wikipedia cleared up the Borderline bass line:
"Anthony Jackson doubled Dean Gant's synth bass to provide a solid and more complex texture.["

Must be nice to have Anthony Jackson as the bassist on your first album.....

 

[4Mal]

After listening to the clip above, I am wondering about putting a gate set low before the mono-syn and one set higher after it on the B3. The idea would be to hit the synth with a little more consistent volume, and then kill it off cleanly on the back end. Biggest thing I hear in that is the more or less 'square' note envelope. The gates might get me there.

All it takes is time...

 

[-Asdfgh-]

I tried a B3 for synth sounds and thought the tracking sucked - sold it. Best results for me have been with a EHX Bass Microsynth.

There are a few options on the newer Zooms. The PWM and similar triggered sounds track indifferently (my old Boss ME6B was better, and the Behringer V-amp is much better), but there are some that don't trigger, and these are better. If you use the B1on you have the option of 5 effects at once so you can build something with compressor, octave, filter, overdrive/fuzz and chorus (or just some of these) which will do well for a lot of 80s sounds.