Can you use a guitar amp for a bass guitar

[MesaMonster]

My kids just bought me a bass guitar for my birthday. I was planning to use it for recording only. I am getting into playing it more so I would like to try playing live with it. I dont want to run out and buy a new amp. Running out of room. I have a Laney LC-50. Lots of head room. Can I use that and not hurt it. Thx,

[1001gear]

Massive owees for the speakers.

[WRGKMC]

I suggest keeping the volume low and micing it if you don't want to blow the speaker into chunks. Guitar speakers use light weight paper and coils and are voiced to produce strong mids. Bass speakers have heavy cones and coils that can take the heat without deforming or opening.

 

I have some high powered guitar heads like my Sunn Concert Lead which has enough power to run bass, but I have it connected to a bass cab and only use it to produce mids and highs in a biamped situation. I only run it at 1/3 of its 200W because it gets too honkey and driven above that. .

It totally sucks for low end however.

 

The EQ on a guitar amp is voiced for guitar, not bass which is an octave lower. The cuts and boosts don't target the bass guitar voice like it should and the components used in guitar amps really aren't beefy enough to handle the higher currents needed to produce solid bass frequencies.

 

The only plus you have there is its a tube head and you're less likely to overheat the power amp like you would in s SS amp.

 

Again, you can run it at a low clean volume so you don't flap the speaker and maybe get buy doing an acoustic combo.

I have a little Ampeg I used to do that with until I blew some cap in it.

 

No way its going to keep up with the kick of a normal drummer. Something like an old Bassman with 4X10's could do OK in small jazz combos and bands back in the 50's because those bands didn't play too loud. My Blackfaced Bassman 50 could do OK using highly efficient speakers playing with a classic rock band. Its got heavy duty transformers and a bass channel voiced for bass. I'd be running it full tilt and would need to mic it for any kind of large venue.

 

Kick drums are like 24" speaker pushing up around 120dB. I wouldn't even want to play live with less then a 100W tube or 300W SS head and solid 15" in a bass cab. A guitar speaker pushs all midrange tones and sound paper thin. Especially in an open backed cab which isn't tuned to produce lows. Most bass cabs are deeper and ported and tuned to a low resonance. an open backed can is going to start flarting out at very low volumes so beware.

[MesaMonster]

As always WRGKMC, you are a wealth of information. Had no idea. Thanks for the response.

[DeepEnd]

The short answer is "yes." But you can also use a monkey wrench for a hammer. As long as you don't crank the amp you won't hurt it and you could easily get recording volume out of it but playing live, no. Your amp does have an external speaker jack. If you can get hold of a used bass cab you won't hurt the electronic part at all and it should sound okay but by that point you might as well just buy an amp.

[onelife]

I've used my Yamaha DG80-112 for live acoustic (with pickup) and electric bass with no problems whatsoever. In fact, the results were stellar - better than some bass amps.

 

I've also recorded electric bass using a SF Fender Champ with surprisingly good results.

 

 

 

[WRGKMC]

I bought a 60W Randal combo in mint condition years ago. I had it with me at a gig when I was playing bass and ran a cable to in so I could run it in parallel to my Ampeg. I only had it cranked up a little to get a little top boost. Sounded fantastic that night.

 

Next day I tried the amp out and it was fizz city. Something must have blown and it sounded like crap.

I did allot of work on that amp trying to get its sound back. Changed the output transistors and voltage regulator, tried another speaker.

Nothing helped. I suspect it was a damaged cap some place, but never did figure it out. I wound up selling it cheap. I let them know what the issue was. Maybe they were able to figure it out.

 

I had another instance using a bass head with a guitar speaker. We were jamming and about half way through the rehearsal I start hearing this fuzz tone coming from the bass players amp.

 

I opened the cab an the speaker had ripped around the edges and there was paper all over the place. The cone was being held in place by the spider around the coil. I've repaired surrounds before but there was no way I was going to patch that one up with the entire ribbed cone blown away into confetti.

 

Back in those days we were very poor musicians and gear choices were limited and anything decent was very expensive.

The prices and choices for gear these days has never been so good for musicians. If I only had those opportunities

back then - even with todays pricing.

 

Bass gear is especially inexpensive because there's allot of it around and it doesn't sell very quickly used so you can nail some fantastic deals.

You can easily find a good 300W head for under $100, a speaker for the same. The big cost is the shipping cost of a cab. If you either build your own or buy it on Craig's list locally you'd do much better. I do recommend a separate head and cab too. Combos are usually heavy and underpowered plus you can always upgrade the cab when needed and use different sized cabs for different venues.

[DeepEnd]

Another option is to replace the speaker in your Laney. The Celestion Pulse12 or Eminence Basslite S2012 bass speakers would easily handle the output of your amp and both have enough high end to be serviceable for guitar.

[thatsbunk]

If you're running out of real estate for another amp how's about one of these?;

 

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/BassDriverV2?product_id=%7Bproduct_id%7D&adpos=1o3&creative=54989262241&device=c&matchtype=&network=g&gclid=CJvdhfnpt88CFQtZhgodGAYInQ

 

Our bassist uses one for practice & also has plugged directly into the pa for some gigs. sounds good to me.

[Mikeo]

If you're running out of real estate for another amp how's about one of these?;

 

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/BassDriverV2?product_id=%7Bproduct_id%7D&adpos=1o3&creative=54989262241&device=c&matchtype=&network=g&gclid=CJvdhfnpt88CFQtZhgodGAYInQ

 

Our bassist uses one for practice & also has plugged directly into the pa for some gigs. sounds good to me.

 

 

 

I have one of there guitar amp foot pedals, it broke years ago. They work and sound good.

 

This or keep the guitar amp low. Then again there kids and probably will not.

 

The big question is how long before they mess up the speakers in the Laney.

 

 

[WRGKMC]

If you're running out of real estate for another amp how's about one of these?;

 

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/BassDriverV2?product_id=%7Bproduct_id%7D&adpos=1o3&creative=54989262241&device=c&matchtype=&network=g&gclid=CJvdhfnpt88CFQtZhgodGAYInQ

 

Our bassist uses one for practice & also has plugged directly into the pa for some gigs. sounds good to me.

 

Sans amp will work but they are well over priced and already old news.

 

What's going on now is DI boxes with amp modeling.

 

You can buy one of these for $50~60 and it will blow the doors off the old sans amp.

There are dozens of other working right up to some high end units that do absolutely amazing things.

 

I been using this one for maybe a year now and still haven't run out of great tones.