Playing Bass through Guitar head

[Oldtubes]

Hi all, Newbie to forum.

Anyone know why or if a Bass guitar can be played through a Rake reverb Head into 4 x 10 bass cabinet with out any problems with the head.

Regards Mike.

[bob p]

i don't know anything about your particular amp, but i as a general rule playing a bass into a guitar amp head shouldn't cause any problems. you'd need to be careful, though, about playing bass into a guitar cabinet. if you feed those low frequency signals into a cabinet that's not designed to reproduce them, its possible to damage the speakers.

[Don Symes]

There are three differences between a guitar rig and a bass rig - and, but for the last, they don't make a whole lot of difference.

1) The speaker setup, as mentioned - for bass you want a lot of effective cone area. That could a horn-loaded 15 (Acoustic) or a bunch of 10s (SVT).

2) The tone control knee frequencies are shifted a bit - but if you can get a tone you like, who cares?

3) The output transformer - a bass amp will have a bigger one for a given power level so it can pass the lower frequencies without pooping out and saturating. Really efficient speakers and a situation where you don't have to run dimed all the time help make this less of a issue.

[Wild Bill]

There are three differences between a guitar rig and a bass rig - and, but for the last, they don't make a whole lot of difference.

1) The speaker setup, as mentioned - for bass you want a lot of effective cone area. That could a horn-loaded 15 (Acoustic) or a bunch of 10s (SVT).

2) The tone control knee frequencies are shifted a bit - but if you can get a tone you like, who cares?

3) The output transformer - a bass amp will have a bigger one for a given power level so it can pass the lower frequencies without pooping out and saturating. Really efficient speakers and a situation where you don't have to run dimed all the time help make this less of a issue.

What Don said! Especially his last point. Bass heads have an output transformer that is about a third bigger and heavier than a lead guitar amp.

Guys who play slam dancing hard core have the opposite problem. They tune down to maybe open C where the strings are almost falling off and find their Boogie or whatever craps out on the lower strings. The output transformer is too small to handle the lower frequencies at high power levels. Grafting a JCM 800 style preamp into an old tube bass amp can result in great fun!

---Wild Bill

[Oldtubes]

Thanks

Bob Don and Bill, thanks for your input re playing Bass through ordinary guitar heads. This puts a new slant on the possible problems. A need to rethink the way things are done.