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My band has been advertising around town, trying to find a vocalist/bassist so we can start playing live. It's only been a couple weeks, but I'm not entirely optimistic that we can find one person capable of doing both, which is sort of a requirement. In the event that we don't find the right person for the job, we are considering just getting the best damned vocalist we can, and "cheating" on the bass. My brother gets a pretty chunky rhythm tone, so the lack of actual bass would probably go unnoticed by most non-musicians, but there are parts where the bass (on our demo) follows the lead guitar -- I played both in the studio. So, I'm thinking of trying to set up something that will allow me to get a halfway-decent bass sound out of my guitar when the two parts would normally be played together. I'm not talking about a tone that would make any bassists in the audience jealous, but a passable low end.
I experimented with the pitch shifter on my effects unit just to see if it would work in theory (the actual playing) and it does in the context of the songs where I'd be doing it, but I need a way of getting a clean tone with the proper EQing to speakers that can actually handle it. My old Peavey Classic 410 doesn't sound so great when you add an octave below the original signal. So, I'm thinking that something like the following would work:
Guitar -> A/B/Y
A/B/Y Signal #1 -> standard guitar rig
A/B/Y Signal #2 -> octave/pitch shifter -> bass amp
I have a 60W 15" Randall bass combo at home to try this out with, but I have two concerns. First is finding a pedal that will get me a reasonably acceptable bass sound; would something like a Boss Octave pedal sound fairly decent played through a properly EQ'd bass amp? And are most A/B/Y pedals capable of switching from A-only to A+B without a delay or a loud pop?
Hopefully someone has tried this and can advise me a bit. I have a shoestring budget to do this on, and realistically would probably want to find an amp other than the Randall before we actually tried this in a live situation. I have a J-Station with good bass models on it, but I don't think it's going to be a practical substitute since it's actually intended to use those bass amp models when played with an actual bass.
I experimented with the pitch shifter on my effects unit just to see if it would work in theory (the actual playing) and it does in the context of the songs where I'd be doing it, but I need a way of getting a clean tone with the proper EQing to speakers that can actually handle it. My old Peavey Classic 410 doesn't sound so great when you add an octave below the original signal. So, I'm thinking that something like the following would work:
Guitar -> A/B/Y
A/B/Y Signal #1 -> standard guitar rig
A/B/Y Signal #2 -> octave/pitch shifter -> bass amp
I have a 60W 15" Randall bass combo at home to try this out with, but I have two concerns. First is finding a pedal that will get me a reasonably acceptable bass sound; would something like a Boss Octave pedal sound fairly decent played through a properly EQ'd bass amp? And are most A/B/Y pedals capable of switching from A-only to A+B without a delay or a loud pop?
Hopefully someone has tried this and can advise me a bit. I have a shoestring budget to do this on, and realistically would probably want to find an amp other than the Randall before we actually tried this in a live situation. I have a J-Station with good bass models on it, but I don't think it's going to be a practical substitute since it's actually intended to use those bass amp models when played with an actual bass.
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