Best Bass Amp for Guitar?

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bahklava
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Best Bass Amp for Guitar?

Post by bahklava » Mon Apr 23, 2012 4:20 pm

To make a long story short: What's the best bass amp for guitar? I'd prefer to keep this under $300 if possible.

Details:

I do a lot of signal-splitting, and I'm looking for an amp to meet my needs.

First, I have my guitar plugged into a y-adapter. One cable feeds into an Ibanez DE7 delay/echo, which I have set to minimum time (30 ms). The dry out feeds into my fuzz pedals, while the wet out feeds into my overdrive pedals. Sometimes I do clean + fuzz, clean + overdrive, just fuzz, or recalibrate for just overdrive).

The second cable, however, is more relevant to our discussion today.

That second cable runs from the y-adapter into a sub-octave pedal, which filters out anything higher than F on the D string, knocks everything else down an octave, and then feeds into a bass fuzz pedal. On its own, this chain creates an adequate low end; combined with the other signals, however, I get what strikes me as a full, muscular sound, and I am very happy with it. However, my amp isn't.

I'm plugging into a Line 6 Flextone II, which is an awesome guitar amp capable of delivering many killer tones. However, if I set the sub-octave signal too high, or fuzz it up too much, I can tell that it's starting to cause some damage. I don't push it too far - as soon as I notice, I dial the sub-octave down. It would be nice to have an amp that could capture that low-end without any reservations, though - something that will allow me to dial up that low end, or fuzz it up.

If it's any help, I'm currently EQing my amp with bass at 5 of 10, mids at 8 of 10, and treble at 2 of 10.

bahklava
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Re: Best Bass Amp for Guitar?

Post by bahklava » Mon Apr 23, 2012 4:24 pm

PS If the "best" bass amp for guitar is something like $2,000 and there's a good amp for my purposes for $250, I'll gladly go for the "good amp." So yeah, I guess I'm really asking, what's a good bass amp for what I'm doing?

Also, would it work for me to grab a guitar amp head and plug that into a certain bass cab?

a.hun
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Re: Best Bass Amp for Guitar?

Post by a.hun » Mon Apr 23, 2012 7:32 pm

bahklava wrote:PS If the "best" bass amp for guitar is something like $2,000 and there's a good amp for my purposes for $250, I'll gladly go for the "good amp." So yeah, I guess I'm really asking, what's a good bass amp for what I'm doing?

Also, would it work for me to grab a guitar amp head and plug that into a certain bass cab?
Well the 'best bass amp for guitar' would probably be a Hiwatt. Expensive amps though - two grand would be a good price, and you'd still need a cab! :wink:

At more realistic price levels I'd really suggest finding a second hand Peavey bass combo. Seriously, these things are normally good sounding reliable bass amps which I've often used myself without problems and they always sounded fine. You should be able to pick one up second hand for not too much loot.

What you are hearing is mainly the (guitar) speaker(s) failing to cope with loud low end. Another solution could indeed be a clean and fairly powerful (?solid state) guitar amp through a suitable bass speaker. Again Peavey bass cabs tend to be very good for the money. I used a Peavey 4x10 cab with my Orange head for bass for many years - it was great.

Since the distortion is going to be coming from your bass fuzz pedal and not from the amp a solid state amp should be fine for you. They are usually very good at cleanly amplifying whatever you feed into them. Only thing to watch is not to push the power amp section so hard (ie high volume settings) that it distorts as that can blow speakers. Better to get a more powerful one which you won't need to push hard enough for it to distort.


Andy.
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OrangePaul
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Re: Best Bass Amp for Guitar?

Post by OrangePaul » Mon Apr 23, 2012 8:19 pm

The Terror Bass sounds great for guitar on here...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wNOK-JoXHc
Paul.

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Re: Best Bass Amp for Guitar?

Post by bassdrop » Mon Apr 23, 2012 9:14 pm

I would go used. Something like a GK or Peavey combo. Go for at least 200 watts solid state with at least a 1x15. Used Nemesis by Eden are also good. You don't list a location and if you're in the UK your options would differ, i.e. try to find an old Trace combo.
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bahklava
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Re: Best Bass Amp for Guitar?

Post by bahklava » Tue Apr 24, 2012 4:33 am

I'm in California, for what it's worth.

What happens if I wind up with, say, a 50W amp? What tonal difference does that make compared to 200W? I don't mean to challenge you; I honestly don't know, because I've only had one amp (a 60W).

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Re: Best Bass Amp for Guitar?

Post by David Verb » Tue Apr 24, 2012 5:13 am

I'm using an Ashdown Little Bastard for my bass rig. It's a 30 watt valve bass amp. Plenty loud for recording, but not for much else.
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baytamusic
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Re: Best Bass Amp for Guitar?

Post by baytamusic » Tue Apr 24, 2012 1:01 pm

bahklava wrote:I'm in California, for what it's worth.

What happens if I wind up with, say, a 50W amp? What tonal difference does that make compared to 200W? I don't mean to challenge you; I honestly don't know, because I've only had one amp (a 60W).
You want watts when talking about bass in order to be able to reproduce the lows well. You also don't ever want to clip a solid state amp, so you always want more watts than needed. Now if we're talking a tube amp, a 100w might do the trick if you don't mind a little breakup. Ampeg V4 or V4b through a bass cab would be cool, but that's probably going to run you between $700-1000 for the setup depending on what's available and what cab you get. There's a lot of decent solid state bass heads for fairly cheap. You're going to need to know your stuff and spend some time searching to find a good head/cab setup for $250.

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Re: Best Bass Amp for Guitar?

Post by bclaire » Tue Apr 24, 2012 2:55 pm

I don't think you want a bass amp. What you need is an amp suited for guitar and the low end - and to me, that sounds like a solidstate keyboard amp which should be capable of doing what you want in reproducing the low end. Go used and something with as much watts as possible. For what you're trying to do, you're looking to create your own sound so my guess is, you could go Peavey or anything else in a keyboard amp and accomplish this...

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Re: Best Bass Amp for Guitar?

Post by hellagnar Brosevelt » Tue Apr 24, 2012 3:12 pm

Why would this go any further than this?

Fender Bassman!

or Marshall super bass if you need a head and cab.
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a.hun
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Re: Best Bass Amp for Guitar?

Post by a.hun » Tue Apr 24, 2012 3:16 pm

Personally I don't think the amp type here is going to be as critical as the speakers. IMO a guitar, keyboard or bass amp should be able to do what is wanted as long as the speaker(s) can handle the low octave frequencies. But yes, amplifying low frequencies cleanly uses a lot more power than higher frequencies, so wattage will be important. The more the better really, so a bass amp seems logical to me. (Their EQ is also usually more effective than guitar amps!)


Andy.
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baytamusic
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Re: Best Bass Amp for Guitar?

Post by baytamusic » Tue Apr 24, 2012 3:27 pm

Could he just feed a signal from the pedal straight to a DI and straight to a power amp? I don't know if this would work or not, I'd think so. You'd have no eq unless the pedal or DI has it, but you might get more watts for your money this way.

a.hun
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Re: Best Bass Amp for Guitar?

Post by a.hun » Tue Apr 24, 2012 3:40 pm

baytamusic wrote:Could he just feed a signal from the pedal straight to a DI and straight to a power amp? I don't know if this would work or not, I'd think so. You'd have no eq unless the pedal or DI has it, but you might get more watts for your money this way.
Good point!!!

Might well work. Depends on the upper frequency content really, and the OP did say that that octave pedal was cutting everything out higher than F on the D string.

Main problem with DI'ing guitar is you keep the raspy upper frequencies which a guitar speaker doesn't put out but a full range PA speaker would. (Or tweetered bass or keyboard ones.) That might not be a problem at all here...


Andy.
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Ever tried to outstare a mirror?

In the bathtub of history the truth is harder to hold than the soap, and much more difficult to find!

baytamusic
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Re: Best Bass Amp for Guitar?

Post by baytamusic » Tue Apr 24, 2012 4:00 pm

a.hun wrote:
baytamusic wrote:Could he just feed a signal from the pedal straight to a DI and straight to a power amp? I don't know if this would work or not, I'd think so. You'd have no eq unless the pedal or DI has it, but you might get more watts for your money this way.
Good point!!!

Might well work. Depends on the upper frequency content really, and the OP did say that that octave pedal was cutting everything out higher than F on the D string.

Main problem with DI'ing guitar is you keep the raspy upper frequencies which a guitar speaker doesn't put out but a full range PA speaker would. (Or tweetered bass or keyboard ones.) That might not be a problem at all here...


Andy.
I'd think you could still probably feed a bass guitar cab via the power amp, paying attention to ohms of course. I believe my power amp bridged to one channel is a true 600w @ 4 ohm and I only paid around $150 for it. It's an old Altec Lansing. Just thinking outside the box here, since this is a rather unique situation.

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