What Will Happen if I Play an Electric Guitar on a Bass Amp?
I have been playing the bass for a while.
Now I want to be able to play all the big riffs of the electric guitar.
I can get a decent guitar fairly cheap I just dont want to be spending alot of money on a new amp.
I have a stagg bass amp and was wondering what would happen if I played my electric guitar on that amp.
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You are going to want to turn the bass and mids down a bit and the treble up a bit, but otherwise you will get a pleasant surprise. Bass amps handle electric guitar just fine, provided they aren’t already blown out from being overdriven. I prefer a bass amp or combo amp to a guitar amp anyway, since it is a lot more versatile and allows me to plug in a microphone when I need to. I can even jack in a keyboard or sequencer. Guitar amps are kind of fragile in comparison. They are usually made to get those highs and what most players want is to jack the mids anyway! Plug it in and rock on.
Most likely nothing, lots of people have been known to play their guitars through bass amps to get a fatter sound, like Omar Rodriguez-Lopez of the Mars Volta in his earlier days. Just don’t play your bass through a guitar amp.
It will work OK if you play clean – if you want overdrive or distortion – or even reverb – you’ll have to use an effects pedal.
I started as a bass player and then switched to guitar, but couldn’t afford a different amp, so for years I played through my old bass amp (a Vox Venue 30). If your experience is anything like mine you will get a rather flat and uninteresting sound, basically a very clean solid-state sound with no chance of getting decent distortion unless you invest in a stompbox – which I did, and it still didn’t sound very good. I never had a decent tone until a few years ago, when I invested in a Marshall guitar amp.
Bass amps would be more appropriate if you wanted to play straight jazz guitar, but if you want to rock then I strongly advise you to try and part exchange your bass amp for a proper guitar amp that you can overdrive.
The other responses are pretty much on.
Most bass amps won’t overdrive – so if you want to play something distorted, you may not be very happy with the results.
Getting an overdrive or distortion pedal will help you push the amp into overdrive, and might give you that guitar sound you’re looking for.
It’s hard to get great rock or metal sounds out of a bass amp, but anything else shouldn’t be too difficult… but man, it will depend very much on the amp.
I have this Crate PowerBlock that I kick around with for my bass… it doesn’t overdrive very well, it has a really cheesy distortion sound, but it has great clean guitar sounds. With the right distortion pedal it does pretty well… although certainly nothing in the same category as my Mesa…. or the marshall valvestate for that matter.
Saul