Bass into guitar amp

  • I recently bought a bass, just for home recording and noodling around, and I tried it into the KPA. Far from doing any extensive profile search and tweaking, I loaded an Ampeg profile and it sounded quite good...then I somehow switched to a Cornford Carrera clean profile, that I use for guitar, and then it was sounding just phenomenal!
    The question is: is there anything wrong with using a bass in a guitar profile? I mean I know one is free to experiment and find what sounds best to them and all that :P but I mean, may I just be very biased because I play guitar and I am used to mid range sounds, while in fact that's not the bass' natural position and in a mix it wouldn't cope well with the rest of the instruments?
    Thanks for your input!

    Edited once, last by Laimon ().

  • Who cares what you use to make your instrument sound good?


    The KPA is able to handle frequencies on either side of the "guitar-spectrum". What happens at the low-end may be a undefined/unknown for many profiles, but I'm sure that a fair bit of clean profiles coincidentally work well with bass.

  • The only way to check the "mix-compliance" is to lay down some tracks!
    Also, you might play along with some song and see how it cuts. But a bass doesn't only have to cut, it has to build sound foundations as well in many genres :thumbup:

  • The only way to check the "mix-compliance" is to lay down some tracks!
    Also, you might play along with some song and see how it cuts. But a bass doesn't only have to cut, it has to build sound foundations as well in many genres :thumbup:

    My point exactly: playing bass through guitar amp might sound good in the room, but might actually lack some frequencies range that bass is supposed to provide to complement the sonic picture. On the other hand the problem I had with sampled bass (I never owned one before, so I used samples) is that I couldn't get them for the life of me cut through the mix. You could hear the rumble underneath but the attack and all those nice crunchy overtones got lost.

  • Indeed this combination was really clear, snappy and articulated, quite a pleasure to noodle around with!


    'Noodling around with', as you put it, will not provide real evidence if it will work in a mix.
    As always (and the same is true for guitar profiles as well) try it in a musical context.
    Your judgement shouldn't be influenced by guitar amp/ bass amp terminology though.
    ;)

  • I have no doubt that a guitar amp can serve well as a bass amp.
    The Fender Bass amp has been taken over by guitarists, on the other hand.
    It might be that vintage bass amps and guitar amps do not differ that much in general.

  • Josh Homme from Queens of the Stone Age uses/used Bass amps for his guitar tone. Or have you heard of the Band Royal Blood? A two man group -> bass and drums but the bass sounds like a guitar. so anything goes.


    You might wanna record a di track that provides the lows plus the guitar amp track. That leaves you enough options when it comes to mixing.