Can anyone recommend a cheap bass amp . . !!!!

maw4neu

To be used purely for bedroom and home practice . . . I've been told that using the Bass through my Blackstar Artisan 15 Guitar amp could potentially damage the speaker as its been designed for higher frequencys. . . . So I'm open to suggestions . . Plus if anyone's local to me in Manchester and has a cheap Bass amp I'm literally all ears . . Regards Mark

ICBM

At bedroom volume or even a bit higher you'll be fine with the Artisan. As long as you don't hear speaker distortion there's no real risk to it.

It might not sound great though - it's likely to be pretty midrangy by bass amp standards.

IanSavage

What ICBM said - just for practise pretty much any cheap-and-cheerful solid-state amp will do the job if it puts your mind at rest over not risking the Artisan! I was using a Park G10 for guitar and bass practise for years, sounded fine and never had a problem, currently using a Roland Cube for exactly the same thing...

monquixote

My mates got a Bass Cube, that sounds alright.

fretmeister

Roland Bass Cube 30

Get one used at about £100

Much better than the current versions, and it sounds amazing to the point that I only take my Genz Benz / Bergantino super-rig when the venue size absolutely demands it.

TamDB

With reference to these bass cubes, i`ve got a bass cube 100 and an extension cab, (also 100w), would this be enough to cope with small to medium sized pub / club gigs ?, just playing covers etc, or should i treat myself to something bigger as i`ve spotted a few bigger ones o e-bay that i could just about afford at a push.

chrispy108

Depends on whether you're going through a PA or not and the volume you need to get to.

With a PA, you'd be fine, without a PA if you need to be loud against a loud drummer you might struggle a bit, if you're more background noise you might be ok.

TamDB

Thanks chrispy, i`ve got no drums to worry about, (we may be using some drum backing tracks or something, but i`m leaving my mate to sort that bit out), and i do have the doings to get it into the PA to spread it around a bit as the amp has a DI socket on the back. so hopefully if we get some sort of playlist together we might have a go at it, .

daveyh

fretmeister said:

Roland Bass Cube 30

Get one used at about £100

Much better than the current versions, and it sounds amazing to the point that I only take my Genz Benz / Bergantino super-rig when the venue size absolutely demands it.

I took Frets' advice on this when I wanted one, and he was absolutely spot on.

ROOG

I recently played through an Ampeg BA 108, they can be had for £112. I thought it was pretty good and a much better experience than playing through my guitar amps.

maw4neu

Hmmm . . . I think it's going to be the Ashdown After Eight for me . . . I've tried one now and was really impressed . . Cracking little amp with a great tone. It's been OK using my Artisan but it just doesn't have the depth . . There's a couple that are within an hours journey so it's time to part with some hard earned cash this week.

ICBM

The tone is definitely more of the issue with playing bass through a guitar amp than the risk to the speaker, at low volume. You *could* change the speaker to something deeper and more bassy than the Greenback, but obviously that would change the tone for guitar, possibly in a way you wouldn't like... although something like a G12H-30 should be pretty good for both. Still not as good as a proper bass amp though, and a speaker like that is actually almost the same price as the whole Ashdown After Eight :-O.

maw4neu

Good point @ICBM ; . . . And Ive been guilty of going the long way around many times :-)

UnclePsychosis

I don't use a bass amp at home. I have a preamp pedal and a mixer and do all my practice with headphones. 

Maxi

fretmeister said:

Roland Bass Cube 30

Get one used at about £100

Much better than the current versions, and it sounds amazing to the point that I only take my Genz Benz / Bergantino super-rig when the venue size absolutely demands it.

Thats exactly what I sold mine for through eBay , it was mint too !
Fantastic compact bass amp with headphone socket and amp sims built it , bloody loud for 30W .

Fretwired

I have an old Laney - excellent little practice amp with a line out so I can record. It's been replaced by the Laney RB1 which costs about £80 new.

Kebabkid

If happy to use headphones instead for the home, the Zoom B3 is great, plus you can DI it for live use. Quite a few forumites recommended this when I was on the hunt for something cheap and portable with decent bass sounds and I have to say, it's not disappointed. New-£135, used-sub-£90