Joined: May 2005 Posts: 486
Location: North Carolina | For some time I have been adding bass to my 1869 via a GK2 under the bridge connected to a GR-33 guitar synth set to play bass on any or all of the bass strings, depending on the patch. Works just fine but does have some downsides. Thought I'd try another solution.
The idea of an octave divider always appealed to me, but you get it on all six strings. I do have a pitch shift function on a Zoom 505II I had sitting around, so I was messing with it. If one of my guitars were wired stereo it might work, but none are. However, it occured to me that I could split the guitar's signal, send an unaltered line to a channel on the board. The other signal I put through a graphic equalizer set to allow only the lower frequencies and restrict the high ones. This I sent to the pitch shifter which lowered it an octave. I then sent the bass signal to a separate channel eq'd for bass, blending the two signals.
At first it seemed to work great. But the more I played the more I realized that the lower the bass note, the louder it was. So an alternating bass pattern in A would be out of balance, with the low E being louder. It didn't sound anywhere near as smooth as the guitar synth.
What I wanted to do was to restrict notes above a certain frequency and I did, but in a progressively diminishing fashion. I wonder if a good parametric equalizer would give me what I want, with the proper parameters set.
Anybody ever try anything like this, and if so with what result? |