The Bass Guitar Amplifier

Here in the underworld of low frequencies, what you know about guitar amplifiers will not help you. That 20 watt point-to-point hand wired vintage jewel with a 1961 Jensen speaker that breaks up beautifully but still has enough sound to strip the mascara off a cute girls eyelashes is useless when it comes to bass. Even that 100 watt Marshall stack won’t seem very loud once the drummer starts pounding away. 

It takes lots of watts to move bass notes (there is a section on frequency later) and it doesn’t hurt to have as much as you can afford in your arsenal. In a time not too far in the past more power translated into refrigerator-sized speaker cabinets and amplifiers weighing more than your average cornerstone. This is, fortunately, no longer the case in this wonderful new age we perform in. Class D power amps have replaced toroidal iron and magnets are made of neodymium. Combined with scientific advances in cabinet acoustic design, these lighter and more efficient materials create a modern day bass rig that is small, loud and easy to move around. 

If you are not sold on the idea of lifting an entire bass rig into the back of a Honda Fit with one hand, let’s talk “low price tag.” Bass amps are like dumbbells, if you buy them new you are, well, a dumbbell. There are a lot of dumbbells out there that already purchased a new bass rig and since have given up just like the dumbbells who started to get in shape and bought brand new free weights that are currently rusting in the garage. Look around for deals. Reverb, eBay, Music-Go-Round, Craigslist, your best friend’s basement are only a few options. Now you can pocket all that money you saved because you bought used and you won’t need a chiropractor.

How much is too much, too little? Frankly, if you are playing through a good PA with subwoofers and monitors, you don’t even need a bass rig. But in most people’s case that it is not always the case. This makes deciding on the size of a bass rig a bit of a conundrum. For example, an Ampeg SVT is too big for the coffee house songwriters circle but a Hartke combo is too small for the stadium gig. Allow me to save you a lot of time reading forum posts and a fruitless consultation with a member of the teenage sales staff at mega-music-monopoly-mart by just spelling it out for you.

A bass amp rated at 500 watts played through a cabinet with a single 15” speaker or a single cabinet with 2 10″ speakers will handle any reasonable situation. When things get unreasonable a PA system will likely be involved.

Bass Amp Brands

A discussion about makes and models could go on forever but I won’t bore you. Suffice to say, the story of bass amps is not unlike the First Testament. First there was Ampeg and Acoustic. Then Hartley begat Peavey and so forth. Today there are as many amp brands to choose from as there are strings types.