Bass had a little _amp...

[Hannu]

Do you think my 15W guitar amp would be OK if I plugged a bass in it? There was a thread about this earlier, but there was a little disagreements. Somebody said that it's ok if you play with very little volume. I've also heard that the "overload" wouldn't be so big if the volume in bass was low and the volume in amp would be higher, than if the volume in bass would be full and the volume in amp small. So would the first option be more economic even if the result of both sittuations would be as loud?

Im planing to get the worst and the cheapest bass "piece of ****" guitar available and try to satisfy my need to play something very funky.

Sorry about the unclear English.

[zKing]

This is just a bad idea. The guitar amp, especially the speakers, are not designed to handle all that low frequency WOOF. It will sound like do-do and have a decent chance of damaging the amp.

What is your purpose in doing so?
Do you just want to learn to play bass? You don't need an amp to do that in the beginning.
Do you want to play bass in a band or do some home recording? It will sound terrible through that amp no matter what.

I would save pennies for a cheap, used POS bass amp or forget the whole idea. If you don't have the money for a bass amp, you don't have the money to take a chance on messing up your guitar amp.

[Hannu]

Good thinking!


I just planned to play myself just for fun, atleast in the beginning.

This is really weird that I must somehow produce the music that I like even if it needs to buy another instrument and even if im not going to play it in a band. Have to search for the cheapest bass AND amp on earth now! :)

[Hannu]

I just got an idea!

What if I connect a huge (..or maybe a pretty huge) PA on my amp and then plug the bass in? Then the speaker of the amp doesn't have handle that low frequency! What do you think? I might borrow the PA for free.

[Hannu]

Does anybody know the answer for the last question?

[zKing]

Not sure exactly what you mean...

I know several PA setups where people just jacked the Bass directly into the board for a clean sounding bass, didn't sound too terrible, but then again I'n not sure if the board had some specially goodies in it for just that purpose (or perhaps there was some kind of direct box I didn't see).

I'd be real careful about going from your amp to a PA. Does the amp have a LINE LEVEL out? You DON'T want to be sending a speaker level signal to a PA's mixer...

Does the guy who own the PA know something about music gear? I'd get some help on that...especially if its not your gear.

[Hannu]

Damn, I wrote this post times ago and I just noticed that it didn't go trough, so...

Yeah that's what I ment. You said that the amp's speaker can't handel low notes that the bass has, so when I plug it into PA the speaker of the amp is muted, so the only speaker that is handling the bass notes would be the PA. Right?

Why I have to be careful with the PA? I remember when I was buying the amp the guy who sold it, connected it into a huge PA and said that it's fine. Actually I have used that PA before, but just for guitar (from amp to PA).

Line level out? It has an output to speaker which I have used once I don't know else.


PA's mixer? What mixer :) I just pluged a cable from amp to PA. Did I do terribly wrong? :rolleyes:

"The PA guy" doesn't know anything about music gears. Well, I don't know much either.


Thanks for your advices!

[ESP_Viper]

You can plug a bass into a guitar amp. Just don't turn it up very loud, you can blow the speaker and/or the amp. I used to do it on purpose to try to blow my old amp. It never did. I tried to blow the amp on many accounts and never could. I sold it for 25 bucks.

[Hannu]

So now we have two different opinions...

Do you have something to say as your defence mr King? :D


I'd still also like to know if it's wrong to plug the amp straight to PA, or should the mixer be in the between?


Thanks!

[Hannu]

Originally posted by Hannu


I'd still also like to know if it's wrong to plug the amp straight to PA, or should the mixer be in the between?



also, do you got excperinses about screwd up amps becaus of bass zKing?