I'd like to separate my sound out, Bass, Melody, left and right.

I've got an AER Compact 60, and a MarkBass AC101, and use a POD X3 Live.

Would it be reasonable to set up the POD to send 80% of the bass to the MarkBass on one side, and 80% of the melody to the AER, and mix the rest to get some ambience? or are the amps so different that it will all sound terrible?

Obviously I'm going to try this out..

In the longer term I think I'll get a KC880

Looking at the manual, I can use pan to direct the two signals where I want, but there is no global EQ or reverb, so I won't get any stereo effects. I will however get separation, but as I won't get any stereo effects I might as well pan to 100% right or left..

At least if you're panning 100% right and left, you're going to get very clean separation between your tones. I understand the desire to get a unified, overall reverb, but it sounds like this is one of those "gotta work with what you have" occasions.

Perhaps it's time you got more gear. I vote "aye."

Its gonna have to be a KC880 I feel, then I can use the global reverb on the unit, as the PODx3 doesn't have it.

Really I need 2x KC350, a mixer, and a truck load of effects..

I actually do something like this with my NS. Even though I don't have a stereo rig onstage, I like being able to send to FOH in stereo, and we often record our live performances so having a dry feed for each side of the instrument is also helpful (or will be, when I have a solid enough performance worthy of tracking. ).

The only way to do it is some kind of mixer, though. I was using a Yamaha MG-series mixer (it was a real 4-bus so I had a lot of output options). I'm currently borrowing my keyboardist's Mackie 1202, while I work on building a custom preamp/matrix mixer just for the purpose.

With a mixer, you can send whatever dry signal you want to an Aux., and mix that back in to another channel (or two channels if using a stereo effects unit) to route however you like. "Wet/Dry" is handled by the relative fader volume of your instrument channels and the effects return channels. Not as intuitive as a "blend" control, but it gets the job done.

Separating the signals out completely with two amplifiers is a very useful and instructive
experiment but I always end up mixing the two signals back together because I just think that it sounds better; with the two parts knitted together inside of the stereo field...

But for recording I have separated and 'isolated' the sides ( as best as I can) and it is interesting as well as revealing to hear how one side especially the bass sounds all by it's lonesome (It really shows how good, or not, your bass playing is.)

IMHO the Roland keyboard amps have a really nice sound for the Stick.
I use a 110 for practice and lessons but also use a 150 and a 350 for 'the big sound'.
With the 150 and 350 there are no built in effects but the 110 you just plug your Stick right in.
Apprently in the KC 880 they (Roland) decided to add the effect bank ...

But where is the "crazy idea"?

.*j*
..~

The crazy bit was trying to create a stereo sound field with reverb using two mismatched amplifiers - I can see now I'd need a mixer in there to do that.

However, I'll experiment and see how it sounds.

This worked well - just sent the discreet bass signal to the markbass, and the melody to the AER- plenty of ambience without needing to mix the channels.

I'm sorted!