hmmm, interestinf thread.....i love bass so, ill comment....
personally, like class, if i had the choice (ie when the bass is at my house) ill play bass, but that is because we have a fucking don 800w peavy bass stack, with inbound and outbound compression, with a behringer v-amp pro pre amp effect unit and a numark dj mixer, so when recording you can record at low levels, cuz of all the pre amps, so you get get fuzz/air or clipping....if however you use a crappy practice amp even with all the pre ampage, it stills seems weak sounding, if you then record at high levels cuz you dont have compression, it clips like a mutherfucker every time, and then if you record at low volume to compensate for this, you actually cant hear what you are playing, cuz PRACTICE AMPs are fucking peices of shit....so i would only really play live bass, if i had all of the hardware, otherwise there is no point....
i do use synth bass on reason, and the trick ive found with this is to layer a synth bass, with one of the nn19 accbasses, cuz then you get the actuall note being played by the sampler, but you can then get the mad thick bassy noise/feel from the subtractor, also synth bass, i would always say layer diffenent bass sounds rather than layering the same sound, i dunno, from my experience this seems to work, but only if the subtractors level is like half of the sampled level....
sampling bass.....gotta be the most skillfull part of sampling IMO!!!! they used don valve amps and analogue recording techniques, so that sound cannot really be recreated, so if you are going for that type of vibe, peace my brothers.....reminds me fucking saw Quantic Soul Orchestra at GLASTONBURY (sorry for the name drop) they used old school amps, a fucking old hammond (and i mean old) and a fucking well battered drum kit.....and it does make a fcking big difference, I TELL THEE!
but peace....these are my, like, opinions man!!!!
SAFE AS FUCK!!!!!