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As some of you may know, I play in a band that has no bassist. Being that I've played bass for a number of years, I played bass on our various recordings, and live I use an ABY box and octave pedal to a bass amp to play some of the "essential" bass lines. It's a fine arrangement for the moment, and at some point we'll recruit a bassist, but I had an idea for a guitar/bass hybrid that I thought I'd mention anyway...just to see if anyone thinks it would actually work.
My idea would be to take a standard electric guitar (we'll say a Soloist for the sake of simplicity), and install the following electronics on it:
1. Guitar humbucker (bridge) with volume, tone, coil-split and "kill" button.
2. Bass humbucker (neck) with volume, tone and "kill" button.
3. Three-way toggle with bridge/guitar-only, neck/bass-only and combined middle position.
4. Dedicated outputs for each pickup.
My plan would, be to then run each output to its own amp, one for guitar and one for bass. The only major problem I see with this is that guitar strings probably wouldn't give the ideal tone for the bass pickup to pass along, but that would be an area where compromise allows for greater versatility.
I see this as having a lot of potential. My current setup is fine, but there are certain parts where an octave pedal just can't track well, although upgrading to a Boss OC-3 (has "polyphonic" mode) has helped a great deal. Also, switching from guitar-only to bass-only with an ABY box is a two-step process, no pun intended. Having a hybrid guitar/bass would eliminate the need for pedals, and would have all the functionality of a doubleneck, PLUS you could obviously use both pickups in places where the bass followed the guitar.
Does this idea seem totally ridiculous, or should it be functionally possible? Again, I understand that there would be some potential shortcomings with the bass tone, but it seems like it should work. Also, the option of using a stereo cab with 2x12 on top and 1x15 on the bottom (Randall offers this) would mean I could essentially gig with a half-stack and an extra head for the bass, instead of two full rigs.
Thoughts? Mockery? [img]/images/graemlins/scratchhead.gif[/img]
My idea would be to take a standard electric guitar (we'll say a Soloist for the sake of simplicity), and install the following electronics on it:
1. Guitar humbucker (bridge) with volume, tone, coil-split and "kill" button.
2. Bass humbucker (neck) with volume, tone and "kill" button.
3. Three-way toggle with bridge/guitar-only, neck/bass-only and combined middle position.
4. Dedicated outputs for each pickup.
My plan would, be to then run each output to its own amp, one for guitar and one for bass. The only major problem I see with this is that guitar strings probably wouldn't give the ideal tone for the bass pickup to pass along, but that would be an area where compromise allows for greater versatility.
I see this as having a lot of potential. My current setup is fine, but there are certain parts where an octave pedal just can't track well, although upgrading to a Boss OC-3 (has "polyphonic" mode) has helped a great deal. Also, switching from guitar-only to bass-only with an ABY box is a two-step process, no pun intended. Having a hybrid guitar/bass would eliminate the need for pedals, and would have all the functionality of a doubleneck, PLUS you could obviously use both pickups in places where the bass followed the guitar.
Does this idea seem totally ridiculous, or should it be functionally possible? Again, I understand that there would be some potential shortcomings with the bass tone, but it seems like it should work. Also, the option of using a stereo cab with 2x12 on top and 1x15 on the bottom (Randall offers this) would mean I could essentially gig with a half-stack and an extra head for the bass, instead of two full rigs.
Thoughts? Mockery? [img]/images/graemlins/scratchhead.gif[/img]
) happened.
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