main issue with playing bass through guitar amp is speaker?

[George]

from what i've been reading the main problem with playing bass through a guitar amp is the speakers not being able to handle the frequency range, sometimes leading to damaged speakers from too much farting.

is this the case? i have a little 30W 6L6 combo with a cannabis rex inside it. would it just be a case of putting a bass speaker in there and calling it a day?

[paul_]

I've always understood it to be a speaker issue, but google "excursion limited power handling".

I knew a guy who blew both speakers in a Crate 2x12 guitar amp playing bass through it, and another guy who blew one speaker in his 2x12 Marshall valvestate with a guitar merely by using too much big muff, octave pedal and neck humbucker at gig volume (just say no to Tool, kids).
I've played bass through my '73 Superbass into a 1960A with Celestion 75s, but as it's a non-master volume amp you really don't need to crank it, plus it distorts too easily and takes you into Jack Bruce territory if you do anyway... I've only recorded that way so it was definitely an "err on the side of caution" scenario.

[avj]

Awesome links here, courtesy of paul_'s suggestion:

http://barefacedbass.com/technical-info ... ndling.htm

http://barefacedbass.com/technical-info ... sters1.htm

This was a topic dear to me a few years back when trying to make a decision on bass amplification, and I now use an Orange AD30 guitar head through an Acoustic 4x10 bass cab and it sounds great. I don't know that a "bass speaker" is going to do the job as well as a proper cabinet unless you don't care about the poop-inducing lows and want a more vintage sound.

Grab a cheap 1x15 cabinet and use it with the combo for proper bass tonez.

[ekwatts]

Guitar speakers are tuned all over the place, but a bass is still effectively just a guitar tuned an octave lower. I'm willing to bet that you're going to be good playing through a somewhat transparent 12" guitar speaker that is intended for low-tuned guitar sounds, but really pushing it if you're trying to play some full-on bass through a speaker tuned for a killer lead tone and high mids or something.

But that said, do you really want to go and risk playing bass through a new Swamp Thang you just paid £70 for? Probs not.

I'm thinking about volunteering myself as a bassist for a fuzzy band at the moment and playing my baritone tuned E-E through a Wooly Mammoth into my Little Rock head and Zilla cab loaded with a Swamp Thang and a Wizard. I'll let you know if I blow the thing up.

[Fakir Mustache]

Another problem, although not in danger of breaking anything, is that if you do hook up a bass speaker, the amp might still not produce quite the same frequencies in the low end. Although some people might like the sound anyways.

For example in this video (not mine), he has the bass in the "normal" and "bass instrument" inputs, although it's a Bassman 10 and on the opposite side of the more common model, you have to listen to what he says:[youtube][/youtube]

Although I don't have any idea, it seems at least some have the inputs on the other side like most Bassmen, the others seem to have a weird bass/normal - bass/studio layout, hard to tell what is modded and what original.

[Fakir Mustache]

Here's another video to prove my point, the beginning is mostly talk in Japanese and funny English, but you can hear right after that it still doesn't sound like a proper bass amp. It's a silverface Dual Showman Reverb through an Ampeg bass cab:
[youtube][/youtube]
That pickguard is really cool though.

[Brandon W]

I tried this before because i don't have a bass amp right now. I plugged bass into my mesa and it was terrible..It could be that the speaker can't handle the freq's. My friend told me not to do that anymore because i'll ruin the amp...i don't know if he meant the speaker or the power section because it's a combo..I don't understand how you could ruin the power section though because it seems like the speaker would be the only thing that would break..

[avj]

The Dwell-Shomun Rhubarb set to FRAT is a great sound. That's the same amp chassis as my Vibrosonic, which I have not only used with guitar and bass, but also with synths -- bass and synth through a bass cab, of course.

One may argue about the quality of sound with using a guitar amp and bass cab, but I can't think of any practical risk in doing it. Obviously some amps have tone stacks that are going to sound dogballs with a bass, but the only damage would be one's soul for choosing to use such a terrible setup.

[laterallateral]

Instrument amplifiers cannot be damaged by any instrument level input. In most cases, guitar amps will not have the resolution required to articulate the extended low end of a bass signal and in this case, these frequencies will simply be omitted from the output signal. There are no chances of causing damage to the amplifier itself with feeding it any kind of signal, provided it's not already been amplified. So if all the non-reproducible low end is cut from the signal, does that mean that there's no cause for harm to the speakers?

In most cases, NO. Speakers aren't designed to work continuously, at the very edge of their frequency response spectrum and given that guitar speakers are typically designed to operate in a narrower spectrum, feeding it a bass signal almost invariably means asking it to work at the very edge of it's operational range.


It's like Eric said. certain guitar speakers might be able to handle it, in my experience, most guitar speakers will be able to handle it for a while but a lot of them will tear themselves apart within minutes of you playing bass trough them at anywhere near rehearsal volume. You're always better off investing in a proper bass cab, if you're going to try playing bass through a guitar amp.