playing bass through gutiar head

[felix]

question is will it dammage anything in amp.

[Rob Mercure]

No. But be wary of playing bass through guitar speakers. While some have and do get away with it - many variables - the bass cone excursion may pop your voice coil out as I've seen many times and even tear the paper cone of a very old speaker (one example from the 1950s). Hmmm, while probably not a significant issue I have seen some 2 ohm impedance bass cabinets so I'd make sure that the impedances are within a factor of 2 just to be sure.

Rob

[Amp Kat]

Speakers are surely a concern but they also don't have the sonic characteristics of a true bass amp and cab. Fender has a new little small Bass amp and even that thing has way more of a true Bass tone than a guitar rig with a Bass cab. The circuit means alot.

[felix]

thanks for replying. was wondering about power tubes.

[felix]

thanks for replying. wondering about power tubes

[Rob Mercure]

Felix,

No, don't worry about the amp as long as you're not overloading the input with any sort of device that would drive a speaker and, like I mentioned, staying "ball park" on speaker impedances. While some guitar amps may not pass the lower part of the bass signal very well due to small coupling caps and/or a small OT there shouldn't be any permanent effect on the amplifier.

Rob

[felix]

thanks. felix

[Steve Conner]

I play bass through my guitar amps all the time. I've never managed to damage one. I try to use a cabinet designed for bass, but I've used a 2x12" guitar cab in an emergency.

Guitar cabinets can't really reproduce low bass, so it's just a waste of wattage to try. When I use a guitar cab and need to play loud, I use it with my amp that has fancy EQ, and cut as much at 40Hz as I can. I can still hear what I'm playing fine, and have done gigs with that setup.

The only downside is that my 50 watt guitar amps aren't loud enough. I recently got a 2x15" ported cab that I rewired for 16 ohms to match my amps, but even so, it just doesn't flap any pants. I need a bigger amp

[Sweetfinger]

Here's my fave bass through guitar rig

http://www.metalexpress.no/images/pi.../Motorhead.jpg

When I saw them, Lemmy was playing through two Marshall Superbass heads, each on top of a 4X12 and a 4X15, similar to what you can partially see in the picture. It was in a smaller venue, and I didn't hear ANY of Lemmy's sound through the PA(which was working hard to keep up). It was all stage sound, and WHAT a sound; My clothes moved! I'm sure they were on 10, and at those levels, I don't think it would matter much whether they were superleads or superbass heads.

My experience has been that when you play bass, or baritone through a tube guitar amp, you end up turning the amp up much louder because it takes more power to reproduce the lower frequencies. As long as the speakers can handle the signal, the only thing I've noticed is that the power tubes go dead much faster than normal.