I know that playing a bass thru a guitar amp is a bad thing.
But I have heard that basses can be played thru PA systems.
Will this not hurt the PA speakers? or...are they broad ranged enuff to handle a bass?

This could save me a lot of lugging the amp around.
Small church with a good (even tho' it's only 40watt) PA system.

IF the PA can handle it, do I need a bass head or how do I do it to run the bass thru the PA.

Matt

If the PA is only 40 watts it won't handle it. PS there is no such thing as a good 40 watt PA. :rollno:

If your system had more power and the speakers were adequate you might be able to play though it.

gennerally a PA is used for your bass anyway. most older players that dont want to lug huge cabinets bring rigs like 1x12" or 2x10", just enough to hear themselfs on stage. the rest comes out of the PA for the audience..

but in your case i dont think its a good idea.

Yes, a PA is very broad-ranged. It's designed to handle everything, which is why so many people run bass through it instead of through their own amp.

I'm going to assume the least knowledge to help explain this to you. With a regular bass and bass amp, here's how it works. The bass plugs into the preamp, which creates a sweet-sounding tone (hopefully), which then goes into the power amp, which then makes it loud, and finally the power amp send the signal to the speaker. The bass amp head contains both the preamp and the power amp.

The PA works the same way. Signals go into the mixing board (like a preamp) where there are mixed and equalized, then sent to the power amp, and then to the speakers.

So you can run the bass directly into the mixing board, but it's not designed to make bass tones sound sweet, so it won't sound as good as a bass amp. What many people do is use a bass-specific preamp/direct-in box (kind of like a pedal) between the bass and the board to get the sound they want. You can also run the signal from your bass amp's preamp to the board. Some amps have direct-out jacks just for this, other times you run the plug from the effects send jack. Don't plug the output of your power amp into the input of the mixing board, it will cause damage.

The PA has a power amp that's only 40 watts? That seems really small. Unless the PA has over 150 watts, you definitely need to bring your own amp. Maybe your church has great acoustics and you want quiet music though, so I can't say for sure.

Small church....and my 30 watt combo will fry the folks on the back bench.
I am also the sound guy/ elec. tech/general geek. We , I , am looking at upgrading our simple PA to a mixing board and PA set-up and was just wondering of I could stop lugging around the combo.

Thanks for the info guys!

Matt