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Synth bass through amp?

Dan Bozek

Dan Bozek

Aug 3, 2011
529
29
Pittsburgh, PA
#1
I know you're busy this week, so don't sweat responding, but I've been thinking about bringing my microKorg out for a few gigs I have coming up and sort of doubling some synth bass with my electric bass ala Jesse Murphy style (Brazilian Girls. Same deal. Korg and Fender with pedals, etc... Man do I love that guy.)

I know you do this kind of thing occasionally with Beck and the M83 thing when you do it. So through your bass rig on stage? I'm thinking that I want everything coming through the same amp because I'm going back and forth, but is there anything practical that I might be missing setting this up? Aside from the keys having the same output volume as a bass... DIs for both to FOH, presumably unless they're gonna mic my cab too. Basically, I'm just picking your brain because I don't want to miss something and look really dumb if I'm missing something.
 
#2
Hi,
Yes I do this all the time. With Beck, I have it going to separate DI's, but also fed through my amp.

This band I'm producing now (SVIIB) has a bass rig on stage and they do something clever: when there's electric bass, it goes through the SVT and DI. When there's synth bass on tracks, that gets fed through a separate output of their interface into it's own DI, but also a through straight into the SVT rig as well. Smart.

Yes, DI's for both, but an A/B box so you can put it through your rig too. Super easy, and beneficial.

J
 
#4
I've never actually done this--always just relied on the monitors for my synth, with very mixed results in some cases! Would love to have it comin' at me from my amp.
Do you ever run any kind of hi-pass or other EQ to make sure you don't hit the bass rig with subs it might struggle with? Depends on the the rig and the synth patches used I realize--just curious!
 
#9
Man… I made a new discovery setting up today: You think it is a problem when you can’t see your Boss tuner display when the sun is shining? Yeah… Well, a microKorg is COMPLETELY useless because there isn’t a chance in hell of seeing the patch LED or those chicklet buttons!!
 
#10
jmjbassplayer said:
Hi,
Yes I do this all the time. With Beck, I have it going to separate DI's, but also fed through my amp.

This band I'm producing now (SVIIB) has a bass rig on stage and they do something clever: when there's electric bass, it goes through the SVT and DI. When there's synth bass on tracks, that gets fed through a separate output of their interface into it's own DI, but also a through straight into the SVT rig as well. Smart.

Yes, DI's for both, but an A/B box so you can put it through your rig too. Super easy, and beneficial.

J
Click to expand...

Awesome.

Do you have a passive splitter? How do you put your electric bass and synth bass into the amp at the same time?
 
#11
Lorenzini said:
Awesome.

Do you have a passive splitter? How do you put your electric bass and synth bass into the amp at the same time?
Click to expand...

On my gig yesterday I took the through outs of my two DIs into a little Rolls passive mixer. I definitely lost a little gain doing it with that box, but it was post what I was sending to FOH and there was still plenty of amp input gain headroom to make up for it. I have a really nice A/B/Y pedal that would have done the trick a bit more elegantly, but of course, I couldn’t find it when I was putting things together. Probably in the one trunk of gear I didn’t look in. Er.

And on the songs where I used the synth, I was also playing bass guitar, so I figured out how loud the synth volume for a particular patch needed to be by comparing it to the output of the bass and pedals I was also using for that tune. And it was AT MOST around 12-1 o’clock on the synth volume knob.

No joking around: You can DEFINITELY blow speakers mucking about doing this. It sounds awesome and works well, but figure out what you’re doing ahead of time, and like don’t let your guitar player mess around with it at rehearsal when you go to get a coffee refill, etc… He he he.
 

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