Just noticed a vid on pensado´s place about 
one of his  ideas  to mix metall bass....
Hope , it´s inspiring.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykfWhM-1H1U 
Cheers

Kylotan
Personally I don't bother cloning any tracks. I create a bus for the 'grit' aspect of the bass, where I apply saturation/distortion/amp simulation and maybe a high pass afterwards if needed, then that is routed to another bus which sums the original bass track plus the grit bus.
 

Yeah, same principle really. You're just adding some of the tone/drive type stuff without losing the main sound of the original bass. That's really all it is. There are stompboxes that do this type of thing for guitars and I'm assuming someone has built one for bass and/or it's been incorporated into amps. Not really all that strange. You're just putting the distortion where it works best (mid/upper freqs) and letting the low remain clean because distortion there gets all muddy and crappy. Then that third "clone" I referred to is really just for pick sound and isn't even really necessary because you don't always want that or you could get that from the overdriven signal. It does all have be gelled properly through a bus though. That bus can be then sculpted further or compressed if need be. It's like a fake amp for DI bass.

In addition to reducing track clutter, there are a couple big advantages of using a send to a bus vs. cloning the track:
 
- With a bus, the output can be 100% wet, adding only the level of the "effected" signal you need without summing any additional "clean" signal which is unavoidable using cloned tracks.
 
- With a post-fader send, you automatically have the level of the processed sound follow any subsequent mixing and editing changes you make on the one track without having to mess with control and clip grouping or copying automation.

For the record, I have had trouble with EQ.  Sometimes the Pro Channel EQ doesn't do anything.  You can see that it is on, but it doesn't change the sound.

konradh
For the record, I have had trouble with EQ.  Sometimes the Pro CHannel EQ doesn't do anything.  You can see that it is on, but it doesn't change the sound.

I used to get that in X1 sometimes and maybe X2. Haven't had that problem for a long time though. Not sure what was up with that.

I stand corrected,, that cloning audio does not link the tracks,, but I think this is true of MIDI? 
I used to clone audio tracks but only to make a new track with the same inputs etc.  Now I use track templates.  
 
I come from the school of thought where the least amount of tracks in a song the better it will be. 
If you don't like your bass sound, you look for a bass and pre amp that you do like. 
Or at least find a VST that suites your needs. 
I guess I'm just not into turd polish at all. 
But then each of us has a different reason for mucking about with the software..experimenting all day long is a great way to kill time. :) 

I got zippering when changing eq frequencies in X1 or X2, can't remember which, using the original pro-channel eq but that was fixed in an update.

Tracks bleeding into other tracks or being affected by the processing on other tracks is something I've never seen in any DAW. I can't easily imagine how it could even be possible outside a hardware mixer's summing bus. Some interfaces have less than ideal cross-talk levels but again that wouldn't make track 2 affected by plugins on track 1.

Not being able to solo tracks is another thing I've never seen. Not much help I know....

Maybe contacting Cakewalk support would be a good idea, see if they have any ideas. If there is a bug associated with track solos they need to know about it.