Some of the music I’ve been playing on electric bass is 80s-90s music: The Pointer Sisters, Shalamar, Kool & the Gang, etc, and even some music from today such as Bruno Mars’ “24 Magic”. A lot of these songs were recorded on synth bass. I’m just trying to get that authentic sound and even though I’m doing a decent job on the electric bass, I said why not just get a synth bass and play it like on the recording.
So, what’s your bass amp set-up like? Do you have tweeters, and then(most importantly), could it handle the sound of a bass guitar with lots of low end going through a heavy fuzz? Because that’s what a synth could be like in some cases… intense low frequency energy generated by a square wave.
What kind of places are you playing, and is there a real PA with subs? In an ideal world, where logistics didn’t matter, I’d have two separate rigs, with the synth going through a full range PA cab, and two separate sends going to the mains, as the tonality of either instrument would be different. On the other hand, there’s the real world.
As I mentioned, way back I had two different channels going into one big amp, but we were doing originals in smaller ‘new wave’ dumps with PA’s using a pair of 15”+horn cabs running just vocals, regular keys, and maybe drums(guitars and bass were on their own). However, we did one theater gig, pro PA, opening for the band Berlin; I gave them just one send…I switched back and forth quite a bit. But my synth bass tone wasn’t that bright; I was taking cues from Kraftwerk and Ultravox but also funk like Parliament’s “Flashlight”. You might want more high end, but still, you’ll need to have separate EQ(and volume) regardless of where it ends up, amp(s)
and PA.
