Well, if you are getting paid to play with a group, and there's a bass player in the group, you may not want to step on his toes unless of course you plan on not playing with that person again... All I'm saying is that the bigger the ensemble, the more consideration that needs to be given to each player's role within.

All good, whatever works... (remember, I am nobody)

Well, I've made bunches of CDs and videos, many with bass and melody recorded simultaneously, and, unless you are tracking a heavily distorted melody sound, I can't think of a reason to use a noise gate on the tracking side of things. You can always gate things after the fact, and much ore precisely, if needed.

A good pre-amp in front of your DAW, like the StepBAout, will allow you to shape your tone nicely, which really helps prevent unwanted hissing you can get from applying eq to a track that's already been laid down, especially one that has a lot of compressiion on it.

If you have a PASV-4, try rolling off the low end on the melody track (most DAWs have a high-pass filter on each channel), this will eliminate any crosstalk you might encounter. Crosstalk on the Stickup is in the treble zone, and can be largely avoided if you are running your instrument into a properly matched input impedance.

Again, here the StapABout excels because the treble ed only boosts the "atttack" or atriculation, it's not a shelving eq like most treble controls, except when cutting, then it is a shelving eq.

Ask yourself how the Stick's full-range signal will compete with the other sounds in your mix, and try to give each sound an eq focus. This is best done by cutting unwanted frequencies, rather than boosting desired frequencies...

My 2 cents, or so...

When were you attending college?

Oh man, was it in NY?