I hear a lot of times when people think that playing a bass through a guitar amp will ruin the guitar amp. This is a myth, right? I don't see the difference, a bass is just an octave lower, basically.

any input on this?

You won't do any damage to the amplifier itself, but you may have trouble with the speakers, especially if you're playing loud. As for the actual sound, that will depend on the amp, but many guitar amps sound good with bass, and vice versa. What kind of amp are you talking about?

-Tom

this isn't a specifi instance so much as a general attitude

it's a useless thing to do. if you want to know what specific bass and amp i used i'll tell you, but i doubt they are what you are using. you can try it; it's about as good as the bass sounds you get when you plug your stereo through your guitar amp, except you notice it more. a guitar through a bass amp can be a good thing though.

-noah

my point is just that people think playing a bass through a guitar amp will wreck it or something, and that is wrong, right?

too much bass through the speaker could break the speaker.

shagboy wrote:too much bass through the speaker could break the speaker.

Unless youre playing through a Smokey or something, even this is unlikely. Your typical 4X12 cabinet or 1X12 or 2X12 combo, while it may not provide very good bass response, isnt gonna blow just because youre running bass frequencies through it. If youre running more wattage than the speaker's rated for, sure, but not just because it's bass.

Whether a guitar amp (especially an open back combo) running bass is gonna be able to keep up with a loud band or not is another thing entirely, though.

I have never seen a bass kill a guitar amp, and I assure you I've tried very very hard.

a lot of people play bass through guitar amps. I use an ampeg v-4 (not v-4b) for bass. I love the sound. I once recorded my bass tracks for a song through a friends marshall JMP. It was killer. Certain guitar amps are better suited for this practice than others though. A marshal Jcm 800 superbass is basically an 800 with 6550's instead of el34's. There is less overdrive and more clean sound with the 6550's. El34's give you more rich harmonic distortion, which (probably) wouldn't be desired in a bass tone. I've met a fair amount of people who use a regular v-4 for bass. Same with Orange OR 120's.

I'f you are looking to do this for practice or just dicking around, i'd say go for it. If you are looking for it to be part of your regular rig, i'd say try different stuff out. It's all personal preference.

endofanera wrote:

shagboy wrote:too much bass through the speaker could break the speaker.

Unless youre playing through a Smokey or something, even this is unlikely.

I had never heard of those before, but they look amazing! Does anybody have one of those? They're only 30 bucks, would it be worth it to get one? Even if it were just a decent fuzzbox, it would probably be worth about 30 bucks.