Using a bass cabinet with guitar?

[Exhead]

What is your experience using a bass amp with a guitar amp?

The honey hole has a few there I could pickup. All Vintage 70's and 80's equipment.

Music Man 115 RH Sixty Five Cabinet
Ampeg V4 Cabinet
Carvin V410T Cabinet

Any of these work well or better than the others with a guitar amp?

Only took a pic of this one.

 

[Triple Jim]

I don't know of a reason that any bass cabinet wouldn't work for guitar. The question is whether you like the way it sounds, which is the question for any guitar cabinet too.

Maybe take a guitar and amp when you go look at the cabinets.

 

[Wulfrik]

Some of them have an internal crossover with a 15" speaker and a tweeter. Those tend to sound harsh and 'off' unless, ironically, you use a cab sim with them. They seem to work great with modellers (they're often more of a full-range unit).

It can be slightly harder to get a 15" speaker moving with subtle playing or polyphonic stuff tends to get lost against the lower notes. The stiffer and more immediate your amp's response the better it will work, I suppose.

But they're all different, I reckon. I used to take a Hartke bass combo to acoustic gigs as well as my Fishman Soloamp, and it sounded good as long as I mounted them one atop the other. Side by side there was always weird phase issues out front.

 

[mapleglo]

I've used my Ampeg Micro VR and SVT-210AV stack for guitar on a number of occasions. It's not optimal, but it worked.

 

[EJay]

I have a somewhat rare Bassman 20 combo - think of a Princeton pushing a sealed 15-inch-speaker - and it’s arguably my best sounding amp for guitar or bass. But don’t tell my original ‘62 Princeton lol.

Only about 500 were made.

 

[EJay]

Another thing - There’s a really good chance that V4 cab will sound awesome.

 

[92 Fiesta Red 62]

My old Bassman Ten was one of the best amps I ever played through—guitar, harmonica, keyboards…it was decent but not great for bass. Weighed a ton, that was the only reason I sold it.

My daughter’s Rumble 150 sounds very good for guitar with my pedalboard…sounds pretty decent for harp. It’s a really good bass amp as well.

Note: both of these are combo amps, not bass cabs.

 

[Higgins1980]

I’ve used my Ampeg b-15n as a guitar amp and it works but the tone is way too dark for my tastes. As a bass amp though and for playing backing tracks it works wonders.

 

[dirocyn]

I used to have a Bassman Ten that I used for guitar. 75w and 4x10. It sounded good for guitar, but it could not play distortion quietly. And the amp went from no sound to too loud very suddenly, between zero and one on the master volume knob. It was kinda small for bass.

I am skeptical of any 15" + tweeter arrangement sounding good for guitar.

 

[NobodyReally]

I haven't plugged a guitar into the Hartke HD75, but it makes a great sounding keyboard amp.

 

[Scott Baxendale]

What is your experience using a bass amp with a guitar amp?

The honey hole has a few there I could pickup. All Vintage 70's and 80's equipment.

Music Man 115 RH Sixty Five Cabinet
Ampeg V4 Cabinet
Carvin V410T Cabinet

Any of these work well or better than the others with a guitar amp?

Only took a pic of this one.
View attachment 624954

They should all work fine. The one with 4 10” speakers might be better but the only way to find out is to plug in and try them out.

 

[davidKOS]

I used to have a Bassman Ten that I used for guitar. 75w and 4x10. It sounded good for guitar, but it could not play distortion quietly. And the amp went from no sound to too loud very suddenly, between zero and one on the master volume knob. It was kinda small for bass.

I am skeptical of any 15" + tweeter arrangement sounding good for guitar.

Thanks...I had a Fender Bantam Bassman conversion to a more powerful amp w/ 4x10 speakers that worked really well for guitar and was sweet for bass at lower volumes.

They should all work fine. The one with 4 10” speakers might be better but the only way to find out is to plug in and try them out.

Yeah.

BUT

I loved using a 15" JBL or Gauss speaker for either guitar or bass.

But I'm not the mainstream market.

 

[Scott Baxendale]

Thanks...I had a Fender Bantam Bassman conversion to a more powerful amp w/ 4x10 amp that worked really well for guitar and was sweet for bass at lower volumes.

Yeah.

BUT

I loved using a 15" JBL or Gauss speaker for either guitar or bass.

But I'm not the mainstream market.

The Fender Bassman is a better guitar amp than bass amp.

 

[3bolt79]

I

What is your experience using a bass amp with a guitar amp?

The honey hole has a few there I could pickup. All Vintage 70's and 80's equipment.

Music Man 115 RH Sixty Five Cabinet
Ampeg V4 Cabinet
Carvin V410T Cabinet

Any of these work well or better than the others with a guitar amp?

Only took a pic of this one.
View attachment 624954

had a GK 2x10. Played my Marshall through it. It sounded like crap.

 

[Butcher of Strats]

Not a fan of the bass cabs I have tried.
Ampeg V4 cab may be a guitar cab if not V4B?
Still not really a good cab if you have any other options?
You would have to pay ME $200 to take away a V4 cab, I had one and am glad that thing is gone.
Certainly though some guitar players love a big warm bassy sound and tend to roll off alla that nasty treble.

I think earlier "bass cabs" are just guitar cabs, but by the mid 1980s a bass cab became quite different, except then they changed again for slap and added tweeters and aluminum cones.
So they are not all the same.

 

[davidKOS]

The Fender Bassman is a better guitar amp than bass amp.

My all-time fave amps, which I really regret selling/trading, were a BF Bassman head and a BF Showman head, which I used with the 15" speakers and sometimes another extension cabinet of unspecified memory. It might have been 2 15's, the JBL and the Gauss.

Sometimes I played bass through the Shwman! or guitar in the Bassman...but the speakers always were heavy duty speakers without a lot of breakup or speaker tone color.

Which was itself a tone color!

All that was before 1980. sigh

 

[davidKOS]

I

had a GK 2x10. Played my Marshall through it. It sounded like crap.

Can't say I was ever a big fan of the GK tone.

 

[Butcher of Strats]

The Fender Bassman is a better guitar amp than bass amp.

Yeah that was my point about which era of bass cab.
All the Fender Bassman amps were from the eras I see bass amps as more similar to guitar amps, and I have owned Bassman amps from every era including the Bassman 135.
To me once they made the Bassman 135 it was better for bass and really kind of sucked for guitar unless you wanted big bassy cowboy chords, clean clean clean and brutally high volume.
Of course that is not a cab, just saying that old bass amps are superb guitar amps because they ARE guitar amps, but when bass amps became quite different from guitar amps, easily half of us guitar players needs were no longer served by bass amps and bass cabs.

 

[Butcher of Strats]

Can't say I was ever a big fan of the GK tone.

I had a GK RB800, traded it plus a travel Tele I made to a bass player for his Alembic fretless!
Awesome deal for me!

 

[dspellman]

I am skeptical of any 15" + tweeter arrangement sounding good for guitar.

I have two that do pretty well. One is an ancient (1971, I believe) Carvin cabinet with two Altec Lansing 418-8As and a mids/high horn. Picked the amp and cabinet up at a church rummage sale. First trial run ("will it actually work?") was with a Gibson 335, and it sounded glorious.

My current performance amp is an old Carvin BX1500 into a pair of fEARless F115s. These have an Eminence Kappalite 3015LF, a 5" Faital mids driver and a 1" tweeter with wave guide (horn). They've been described as a PA-style cabinet with an affinity for bottom end. In other words, if you feed it bass, it will reproduce that bass without farting out. I use this setup for keyboards (Korg Kronos, for example) and for guitar with a Helix.