Bass amps: Tubes or SS?

[LBCwanabe]

I've got a 180 watt tube bass amp. It doesnt seem loud enough to me. Should i get a SS amp? Can anyone explain this subject to me? Thanks, Russ

[cobrahead1030]

what kinda amp is it? a 180w tube amp should be loud as {censored}

 

how old are the tubes in it?

[rockon1000]

I wonder if you can take a signal from the pre amp section and feed it into a SS power amp? I say that because low frequencies take up a lot of power. In my home stereo I have a 250watt /side Carver amp and Eminance Delta Pro drivers in my Infinity speakers. I can suck the life out of that amp by turning up the bass. Running fairly loud and the meters are just hitting the first two power indicator LED's. Crank the bass up at the same volume and they run all the way up and hit the clipping LED's! Bob

[platinum]

what kinda amp is it? a 180w tube amp should be loud as {censored} how old are the tubes in it?

 

 

Agreed!

[Sex Panther]

Bass amps are ridiculous in comparison to guitar amps in wattage. Takes a {censored}load of power to really shake the ground.

[Sex Panther]

With that said....180 should be enough.

[rock_warrior]

My 300w bassamp is crushing the ampeg b2re 450w ss head that I was running. With bass you can always get more speakers, a 6x10 bass cab is not ridiculous and neither is an 8x10 for that matter.

[LBCwanabe]

My 300w bassamp is crushing the ampeg b2re 450w ss head that I was running. With bass you can always get more speakers, a 6x10 bass cab is not ridiculous and neither is an 8x10 for that matter.

...untill i go to put it in my honda civic hehe

[rock_warrior]

Go with 2 15's then. Seperate them at birth only to reunite them for the rock. One up front and one in the trunk.

[olejason]

I've always preferred SS amps for bass. A lot of people go for that buzzy SVT tone which works for rock n roll or metal but not so good if you play in the pocket with a drummer. Plus I love having a 300w head that weighs 6 pounds

 

I can't imagine you needing more than 180w tube power unless you're playing shows with no PA support whatsoever.

[bikehorn]

Tube bass amps sound awesome, but they are heavy, expensive to buy and expensive to maintain(ever bought a load of preamp tubes and a matched sextet of 6550s?). Solid state amps can be lighter and can also sound good, and a characteristic of SS amps is a high damping factor relative to tube amps, which means the amplifier has control over the speaker it is driving. This can result in tighter, more "defined" bass and so a lot of people like this sound. It is also much easier to have high power in a relatively portable package.

 

My advice though is not to play the wattage game but instead the sensitivity game. I don't know what conditions you're using your amp under, but my guess is that your speaker cabinet is not as efficient as some. A speaker cabinet that is 3 dB more efficient than yours will sound like it is receiving twice as much power. In other words the more efficient cabinet will produce the same volume at 180 watts as your existing cabinet would when receiving 360!

 

Also, are your impedances matched up?

[olejason]

It also depends on the brand of the amp. GK's are notoriously quiet for their rated power and Trace Elliot's are known for being stupid loud even when they're rated at 80w or something silly.

[knucklefux]

for bass, i don't really see the advantage of tubes vs SS. now, if you wanted distortion, tubes win. for just loud earth shaking, might as well use SS.

 

also, 180W isn't much for a bass amp. it takes more power to run the lows than it does to run the mids of a guitar amp. if you use drop tunings, or play a 5 string, this lack of power will be even more evident. 300W minimum with tubes, 450W SS. and that's with a good cab with good speakers.

[HRM]

I don't know ANYONE who has a tube bass amp. Ridiculously expensive.

[tlbonehead]

I don't know ANYONE who has a tube bass amp. Ridiculously expensive.

 

You're kidding, right? Even Pignose made a cheap tube bass amp. All the old Fenders, Ampegs, Sunn, etc are tube. Lots of them still around. I still want to know what amp this is. It must have either 8 EL34s/6L6s or a quad or KT88s maybe? It should be loud. That said, I prefer bass players with small stage amps. Things can get really thick and mussy on stage with too much low end material to deal with. It works better, IMO, if the bass has a brighter, lighter onstage tone (so that you can hear the actual notes better) and let the mains bring the full sub-100 hz fequencies in to fill things out. You can still feel/hear them onstage. We have 6000 watts available for the frequencies under 80-90 hz, might as well make sure they are being used!

[chrispsullivan]

i go solid state for bass, just because tube is such a hassle

way too many tubes to replace

[soiajake]

I've got a 500w Trace Elliot bass head and it is awwwesome

[Introspectre]

You need one of these:



6 x 6550's will get the job done.

[worldoftone]

 

I don't know ANYONE who has a tube bass amp. Ridiculously expensive.

 

 

You do now. I have a myriad of tube bass amps. They all get used quite a bit on Stage.

 

- WOT

[tlbonehead]

You need one of these: 6 x 6550's will get the job done.

My old SMF Tour Series head had 8 x EL34s.

[PurpleStain]

I go SS for bass amps. Like someone said before, if you want overdrive, etc. get tubes. I want my tone to remain purely clean, so I stick with SS with bass.

[Mistersuperfly]

The bass player in my band got his Fender Bassman 300 pro for 550$ off of craigslist... that isn't expensive at all especially considering it is an amazingly loud great sounding amp. He did put 6 Gold Lion KT88's in there though, which don't sound too shabby

He had an old 2x15 Bassman cab from the 80's that was a perfect fit for it's footprint and we put 2 of the Warehouse 15's in there... we also retolexed and regrilled it to look like a brownface fender. That thing sounds WAY better than any other bass amp I've heard, but it also has a lot to do with the cab.

When we first put the speakers in the basket was a bit bigger than the holes they went in so it didn't sit perfectly in the hole... that sucked about half the life out of the amp, after we cut the holes out a bit to fit it became a beast, and it's crushingly loud at 9 o'clock on the master.

All in all 180 watts should be more than you'll ever need, you just need to make sure the cab is well made and you are using good speakers... I think it's way more important for bass than guitar.

[phyrexia]

I have a Mesa D180. It has 6 6L6 tubes. Depending on who you ask it is 150-200w total output.

 

I have not played it in a band setting yet, but I have taken it to work and hooked it up to a number of bass cabs (and guitar cabs).

 

It is noticeably quieter when you're playing a bass. When a guitar is run through it, it's mind-numbing. Worse than a Plexi or a Triple Rec or a Super Twin. As others have said, it takes more power to push a bass tone than a mid tone.

 

Speaker efficiency has a lot to do with the volume, too. I am thinking about one of the Diesel 1x15 cabs from back in the 80s. EVs are my friend. I have run it through my Thiele cab, but the 12L isn't really a bass speaker, it's a guitar speaker. It doesn't really handle the frequencies at the power the D180 can generate.

 

Anyway, I have literally dimed this thing with a bass, plugged into a Powerhouse 2x15. It is quite loud. It would definitely not work for R&B if you had to play it that loud. It definitely is a rocker's bass amp if you have to push it. It does not shake the earth like the Titan V12 does though. Of course the Titan has like 8x the power.

 

At moderate volume levels, the EQ is able to scoop out the mids enough to give a pretty good slap'n'pop tone. Still, an amp with more headroom like an SVT4PRO or an MPulse 600 does the RnB thing better IMO. Compared to a 400+ it is grittier, mainly because you have to turn it up more to get the same volume. The D180 is the 400+'s dad, if you want to look at it in a familial way.

[phyrexia]

Oh, so I guess I disagree that 180w is all you'd ever need as a bassist.

[theAntihero]

what kinda amp is it? a 180w tube amp should be loud as {censored} how old are the tubes in it?

 

 

+1 Im not up on tube bass amps but isnt there an Acoustic thats 180 watts?

 

180 watts really isnt a lot for bass especially if you want clean headroom.

 

 

Bass amps are ridiculous in comparison to guitar amps in wattage. Takes a {censored}load of power to really shake the ground.

 

 

+1 it takes something like 3 times the power to make a bass sound as loud as a guitar.