LeftyBassist.com

Well, some of it's new at any rate
Some of you may know that I play kbrd bass in my band. I've been using a Moog Sub 37 ever since they came on the market. I really dig it a bass synth! Recently I decided to add a couple more Moog oscillators and picked up a Sirin, which is essentially a Minitaur with some added features. Thought I'd post a pic of it all.

Geez, that thing's got more knobs than an Alembic Series 2. I'll stick to my passive basses and active 3-band EQ's

Very cool. I wish I could play keyboards sometimes. I love playing synth bass lines, though I do them on my Roland GR-equipped bass. But my Gr33 sounds can't match a real analog synth. That's a cool setup, but I'd be lost with all those knobs and oscillators.

Speaking of synths, Marc, do you know of any small portable synth (like 36 keys?) that you can load sounds into? I hate all these little controllers that require a laptop attached to them for sounds. I'd love something with a USB input that you could just have your sounds on a flash drive and load them in. I know they certainly existed 25+ years ago!

It is a huge gap in the market.

There was the Nord Wave which was sample based. They stopped making it a few years back.

All of the current Nords can use sample libraries but the smallest is the 61 key Electro. You have to hook it up to a computer to load your choice of samples.

There's a digital Mellotron model that also lets you load all of the Mellotron & Chamberlin sounds, but as far as I can see isn't allowed to be a general sample player despite actually being one! As a bass player, you will appreciate the choice of mahogany or walnut cabinet it comes in.



As for the Sub37, not my cup of tea for many reasons, but Moog definitely achieved the rare feat of producing a modern classic with that one.

Unfortunately, I do not believe such a product exists these days. Everything is becoming laptop driven.

Note: I'm not much of a synth programmer, I've only come up with a few patches of my own. At a gig I mess around with the Filter, Resonance and oscillators, mostly to annoy my guitarist who is obsessed with sounding like the original recordings (where's the creativity and fun with that??). OTOH, my keyboardist wears a $hit-eating grin when I go way off script

I'd be very interested in hearing why the Sub37 isn't your cuppa!

Wow, I can't do much on a keyboard, but that rig makes me wish I could. Lately I've been listening to White Denim, which features a lot of Moog.

https://youtu.be/Duom7rGzCfo

It's not that I don't like the Subby, everything I've heard of it since it was first shown is hugely impressive - just that I've got several keyboards that cover as much ground as I need - more than I can fully make use of in fact. We have messed around adding a synth to do for fun covers of tunes by Prodigy and Daft Punk, and my little old Novation K-station was more than capable of despite the 25 note keyboard.

We'll just have to nudge Behringer into making an Akai S1000 clone with a keyboard

The MOOG SUB 37 is absolutely fantastic. These are great units. Yes, I do also own one. Use it as a synth or a controller into Logic Audio.

Hey cool rig. I love bass synth !! Still have my Radio Industrial to trig mainly Omnishere in a laptop but I'm sure real analog is a killer

I've been gassing for Omnisphere for a while now … hoping it'll go on sale someday … but to tell the truth, I've never seen it discounted.

I did buy a tool called Gig Performer - from ILIO - which is really cool. But like everything else in my life, I've not had the time to give it the attention it properly deserves.
https://gigperformer.com/

Anybody using midi bass pedalboards with their synths?
I've recently DIY'd an old organ 13note board with midi out. Use it to play drones or arpeggios or trigger samples.

In view of the need for a small sampling keyboard, I just saw this...

...but it isn't a real product, but a chopped Nord Electro3. This isn't a particularly technical feat since the guts all live under the control panel area and the keyboard is an OEM modular affair.
Trouble is, Nords keep their price well, so you'd have to be lucky to find a cosmetically damaged one going cheap.

edit - sorry, had no idea that pic would come out so big. I don't seem to find a sizing option for this forum

I've got the McMillen 12 Step, but for me it's not really useable, my feet are too big. I've not found a reasonably sized replacement. Typically everything I've seen out there is either too big or too heavy. I really don't want to lug another 30 lbs around to gigs.

That Nord is cool!

I had to look that 12 step up. Arranging pedal footswitches into an octave layout to play midi notes is an excellent idea, but I'd have to have hooves instead of feet to play that.

Something like the Behringer FCB1010 can send midi notes too, but aren't arranged in keyboard layout and only 10 note unless you switch banks - and as the switches always select a preset, you have to copy all the other controller settings to the other presets so the controllers don't change when you play a different note. I've got one with a load of notes programmed but its footswitch layout makes it hard to work musically. It's fine for triggering samples/loops.