Play Bass through guitar amp?

ROOG

Following my previous post, "Beginner fancies a go at playing bass" or such like, I was considering using my guitar amp as a stand in.

I'll be noodling with it at home at low volume, (seriously Mrs ROOG thinks an unplugged hollow body guitar is loud) its not likely to cause any problems is it?

ICBM

No, it will be fine. The risk to a guitar amp with playing bass thought it is to the speaker. As long as you're playing at low volume, well below the point of speaker overload, it should be completely safe.

ROOG

Cheers ICBM, a related question I had was whether the guts of a bass amp was different from a guitar amp?

 

I can see that the speaker system might be.

ICBM

It depends on the amp. Old-fashioned ones, barely at all - a Marshall Super Bass with a 4x12" is only different from a Super Lead by about half a dozen capacitors and the exact type of the speakers. The Fender Bassman was purposely designed to take both instruments, through the same speakers! Modern ones, from about the SVT onward, become progressively more different, and even more so once you get to the first recognisably modern solid-state bass amps - probably Trace Elliots or something of about that era. At that point guitar amps were moving towards modern high-gain sounds and channel switching too.

ROOG

I suppose that in terms of the electronics the frequencies aren't that far adrift.

I noticed that some bass speakers include hi frequency drivers too.  I'm guessing there's a good reason for that!

ICBM

ROOG said:

I suppose that in terms of the electronics the frequencies aren't that far adrift.

I noticed that some bass speakers include hi frequency drivers too.  I'm guessing there's a good reason for that!

Some bass players seem to like them - they give a more hi-fi type transparent full range response, which is quite popular. You need to be careful if you're overdriving the amp, or running a fuzz pedal through it - the extra top-end (which you normally don't hear through large cone speakers) can sound nasty or blow the tweeter if you're not careful.