Second Instrument?

Play Harp and sing, have been known to do a Sea sick Steve style Solo set on something with 2 too many strings on occasion, but only for Cash.

twang box.  Bass was my second instrument back in '65.  I had played a little with a twang box in elementary school.  While I did not take the oportunity, my grade school had a world class flamenco guitarist that taught twang once a week.  The old guy didn't care if you played a classical, an electric or steel strings, I had neighbors who had twang boxes, and older friends who wrote songs.  So we jammed.   
Played twang in college, kumbyeyahed and rowed the boat.  Even played some church music.

My oldest kid  took my nylon string twanger, and taught him self to play when he was single digits.  There were recorders, harmonicas, twang boxes around the house.  The oldest learned piano hanging out at a neighbors house.  took up horn, electric twang (flying V washburn), bass, trombone, and recorder. 
In 65 had a opportunity to learn upright, even went to summer school.  About 13 months ago, my cello playing sister bought me an electric bass. Bought a twanger and a mandolin for my granddaughter at yard sales.  Now practice on twang to get fingering for bass,
If you have read any of my posts, uprights are mistresses which will seduce you, take your money, and always leaving you wanting more. 

So my advice is, any other instrument will help you playing your bass. 

I used to play keys... badly. And I've tried the twang stick, but the bass is home for me. In light of my comment about piano in the other thread, maybe I should pick up a cheapy keyboard to mess around with. Meh. Who knows. I'd like to play an upright some day.

Good subject, and that brings up a question....

My alternate instrument is Guitar (surprise, surprise).   I started on guitar when I was like 13 or 14.   Now that i'm on the downside of 45; the bass has been my mainstay for about 5 or 6 years now; but there are times when I'm playing twangbox instead of bass, and sometimes switching back and forth.   This morning the lead twang guy was out with the utes on the weekend getaway thing; so this mornings service I played my Ovation 6 string (deep body Ovation from early '80s) for the contemporary songs as it was just me and Emily on keys.  For the hymms I switched to bass.   My acoustic guitar amp however is way down the other end of the pew we stand in front of, so it sounded awkward.   We dont have much space to work with, so we have to use the footprint we have as best we can.

I'd like to play my guitars through my bass rig, but I need a way to cleanly switch the two and also provide signal balancing.    I would need to attenuate the signal from a guitar in a big, big way to play it throught the Ampeg / Epifani rig.   Have done it, and it sounds great, but I need a quick and easy switch back and forth thing.  

What have you guys done for something like this?   My ampeg only has 1 input.   I have seen A/B switches, but they don't provide a gain adjustment.   I need seperate gain controls and ideally seperate EQ controls.   While shopping for my recent Stingray, I found that I really like their tone on the MM bass.   I don't like being locked in to buying from GC however.  

Anybody else deal with this issue much?   

Jeff

therer i go again, the fingers cant keep up with the brain.   when i was shopping for my recent purchase of a stingray 5, i found that i really dug the tones i was getting out of tehse little markbass combo ampts at GC.   I'm thinking a 2 channel amp would be really cool, and it seems like markbass makes a nice one.   

Anyone ever noodle around much with Markbass products?   Suggest an alternate 2 channel amp?  

i like to think i can strum a twang stick....  i have my wife's steel string acoustic and an SX tele knockoff to use with my Kustom Defender 5H stack (which sounds pretty nice for a passive bass too).
what i'd like to do is put humbuckers in the tele (the SC PUPS are way too noisy thru the tube amp) and get an a/e nylon string for the string spacing and lack of cheese grater strings.

I'll have to check that out.   I'm not much on pedals generally speakign but that does have some defnite appeal.   I'm not looking to lay out for a new amp right now, I overextened myself a bit with the new Stingray, but she's a beaut.  

a cheap little line mixer could also work..  i have one from behringer which is 4 channels and smaller than your average FX pedal.

Jackie you stole my thunder. 
I agree that twanges sound good on bass amplifiers, I believe that is one reason early Fender Bassmans are so darn expensive. My thoughts are if you need a tweeter, then play violin.