I've been listening to a lot of reggae recently and would love to try making some reggae songs. I'm having trouble finding drums kits, bass, and other sounds that match the 70s-era reggae sound.

Do you have any recommendations on which Sonar X2 instruments/patches to use for:

1) drum kits (particularly those classic reggae fills)
2) bass
3) guitar

In other words, the rhythm section. Those have been the hardest for me to match.

Thanks!

Not sure about individual patches, but Session Drummer & Dimension Pro will provide you with loads of options. 

I particularly like some of the Real Basses in DimPro.

Hope this helps

What bands, songs in particular have you been listening to ? Maybe post some youtube vids

It's not so much about the kits them selves as the way they were played and produced that creates the reggae sound, use more side sticks and rim shots than snare, also lots of percussion, cow bell, cabasa, snare timbale.
Then it's about use of effects if you're wanting a more dub style, flanger on toms and hats and lots of delay on snares and hats, get creative and jiggy with it 


I just had a look through some of the session drummer kits and most of those things are there in most of those kits apart from a very disappointing lack of snare articulations in the kits I've
checked so far, not one rim shot, all I've been able to find are side stick and snare hit but I can't believe it's that limited?


Steve


Something like this maybe ? Jamaican Drum Sounds

The second kit has some lovely snare half edge hits  and rim shots but sadly I don't think you'll find them in session drummer though I hope for your sake I'm wrong, you might have to edit the sfz file or whatever they do.
I use BFD2 and most of the snares have at least 5 articulations so I guess I'm spoilt.

Marley used a lot of Hammond organ and Rhodes piano as the basis of the keys. Sometimes a little Moog synth for color. Horns became pretty prominent in his later works. As stated before, pay close attention to the drums. Especially the kick. In standard 4/4 time the kick is usually built around beat 1 and 3. In true reggae, the kick most often leaves out beat 1 and accentuates beat 3. This to me is the whole foundation of building a true reggae drum pattern. Also, pay close attention to how the keys are being played. They are very rhythmic as opposed to holding a chord. Chords were usually held for slow ballads. Faster rhythms were accented by rhythmic patterns on the keys. There is a great documentary about Marley on VH1 often that his studio techniques are discussed. orgive me if I get the spelling wrong, but the keyboard player that performs with The Who, Rabbit Bundrick, was the keyboard player on Marleys first couple of records. He tells a story about being so confused by the drum track he couldn't find the downbeat. Marley had to show him what to play. Amazing!

ALSO! Don't forget the clavinet with the mandatory wah-wah pedal!

I'd be interested to know more about the production techniques used on some of that old 70's reggae because it's a great sound. I found this comment on a YouTube video of one of The Congo's tracks:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JhTM0Lar3Q

Bass and drums came first, them rhythm and finally vocals. The result is music with highly tape compressed rhythm tracks and true to life vocals and often horn sections. He often put the hi-hat mic through AUX spring reverb then trought an untouched phaser setting. The initial recordings got crushed in terms of frequency in the tape transfers.

It seems the standard bass guitar for reggae has been, as in so many other genres, the ubiquitous Fender Precision. There are plenty of Precision sample libraries around, but the one in Studio Instruments is pretty decent and you already have it, so I'd start there for bass.

I don't use Session Drummer myself, but I've messed with it enough to think that it would do just fine for reggae. Just make the bass drum really big and compress the whole kit heavily. If you're specifically going for the classic 70's reggae sound, and you have full Kontakt, consider Tea Towel Drums or Classic Rock Drums from Wavesfactory.

Don't know about guitar, though. I have OTS EEG, and I'm confident that it could do the job, but I think I'd prefer to find a Strat library for reggae. RealStrat, perhaps?

What soft synth (and perhaps kit) would you recommend for getting those nice snare rim shots, timbale, etc.?

You may have to combine several vsts. For timbale and other percussion TTS general midi drum set may have many of those sounds.

Session Drummer 3 has some Reggae patterns I believe they were in the Smart Loop folder. There are several rim shot samples. Haven’t listen to them but maybe a starting point.