Hi all........I am not a keyboardist. I am primarily an acoustic guitarist who has picked up the bass and has been having a blast playing the big strings. I am not boasting, I am simply being honest. For some reason I find the bass is my best instrument. I am learning everything Chris Squire ever did and am learning song parts faster than I ever have before. It just seems natural for me and I want to expand what I can offer a band.........So enough....... I just wanted you to know where I am with this question....
I have now made the jump into Rush and we are doing three songs from Moving Pictures among a few others. I can actually sing much of Geddys stuff (although it is the very limit of my range and endurance to struggle through Jesus he is tough) but I really need the old Synth sounds. Ohh yeah I forgot to mention I am a complete dinosaur with electronics. In fact I sold my Boss GT-6B multi-effects unit and went back to the seperate pedals for my bass effects. Yeah Last time I was in a band was in the mid 80's Electronics Have Changed!! Wow! So here I go thinking about getting into synthesizers now.....Not smart......
I started looking into the old Taurus II pedals.... then..... after finding out how user unfriendly they are I decided to try and understand more about a good older synth keyboard set up with a midi 13 pedal controller unit. So this is where I am now. and why I need help. I have to find out what people who use these think and so I have joined this forum to see what the experts in here think. ?? I have been looking at the Fatar set ups by Studio Logic but these become quite pricey when you add in the keyboard and even then I am still not sure exactly how I can switch between "chosen chord sounds" and the sub bass notes easily without another foot-button controller as well and I really want the old Synth sounds like you get from the better Roland or Korg or Yamaha units. So far my best guess as to what I want is an older and fairly cheap Korg 8000 or something similiar and a good set of bass pedals to control it and perhaps what I think is called a midibuddy or something like that. This way I can use the pedals as a sub bass and then easily switch to those great synth sounding chords Geddy Lee uses all the time. . Well... No sense in my going on and on about my questions. You guy's most likely already know more about what I need than I could ask for anyway.
Please I hate to sound so unknowledgable about these synths but I really do not know much about the numbers and etc. Perhaps someone in here has an old set up I could use just like it is. I know there are so many new and much more advanced systems then what I would need. I honestly only need about 6 or 7 synth sounds and of course the sub bass option and an easy way to get to them on stage. Thanks in advance..... Great site! looks like it is fairly active this is good to see! pLease let me know what you think would be my best route.

Randy

Hi!
I can't think of any cheap bass type pedals for several reasons. i am a keyboard/guitar player and I use both KBs and GUitars to trigger my synths. Never had to use something as odd as a bunch of bass pedals with synths. Used them on a couple of home organs and so on but that's as far as my experience with pedals goes.

I mean I use a bunch of pedals but mostly for control and not playing.

If you are gonna get into synths (especially doing the Jupiter 8, PPG wave, DX 7, D50 etc classic Rush synth lines. I've played them to death. Hung out with guys from Rush at SBT Toronto from time to time. I know what you're after sound and playing wise). Honestly any good workstation of today (especially Yamaha MOtif ES) can do that kind of synth anthology stuff with no issues. I should say that any decent workstation can do good old Rush type sounds with no issues. Of coarse getting the original synths is always the best way but it's a pain in the ass to put it all together and price wise it's too much to put it mildly. Software synths are at advantage there since they cost little and sound fantastic but you have to take a laptop to gigs and therefore it's only up to those of us who want to bring their computers to every gig. SOme of us do that here but personally I haven't taken the use of software synths beyond studio environments. Live gigs and computers are not my style.
So anyway. Another thing to keep in mind that synth is not a bass or a guitar and has amplification rules of it's own. can't be amped with a guitar or bass amps. I surely run some of my synths through guitar amps and amp modelers but that's just for fun. Not for day to day use of synths. So what any synth of your choice will require is a mixer->stereo speakers kind of connection. At least a home Hi-Fi with loud enough speakers and decent RCA inputs.
So if you're gonna take synths to gigs you'll need to take care of a few things. Proper amplification being one of them.

I'd say get a Motif ES rack and expand it with a couple of An1X plug-in boards for better old school analog sounds (being digital AN1X models analog sounds. Not the same but sounds very close).

You'll have to spend on a KB, set of pedals (like the one you've mentioned) and a pair of speakers too. Logitech speakers get mentioned around here quite often because of the price and quality. Obviously real pro level speakers will cost a few thousand bucks but Logitechs seem to do the job for most KB players that do live gigs.

Okay. That's my $00.02 on it all for you.

-ED-

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A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone's feelings unintentionally.
- - - Oscar Wilde

I think Ed is spot on. I'm also a synth player but not very educated in the proper use of bass pedals. I've used pedals much as Ed describes, either for use as additional midi controllers or occasionally as drum pedals when I've dabbled a little on an electronic set. I've also used them on occasion with an organ, but it's far from being my forte.

I won't suggest the computer route either, although I do use mine live with no issues. There is a pretty big learning curve there as opposed to plugging in a synth and jamming on it. I like the Motif ES as well, especially with the AN plug in. That's my ahrdware setup btw. Even that might be a bit of overkill though if you'll never need or want to use the vast array of acoustic sounds in it.

A Korg DW8000 would do fine, but remember that this is now an old synth and will be subject to the problems that many of the vintage gear of it's era now has, mainly that controllers and keys tend to get sticky or scratchy, and that it's a bear to fix when it breaks.

If you want to go "on the cheap" and as you say, you need only a few staple synth sounds, you might conside something along the lines of the Yamaha SO3 or Korg X5D. Both of these are entry level synths. Although I like Yamaha's acoustic imitations, I usually prefer Korg for some of the basic synth sounds, keeping in mind that these are digital replications and not true analog sounds. In a live setting, for most players, that probably won't make enough of a difference that it justifies taking a chance on using true vintage analog gear.

AJ