party?

kearney · #1 08-14-2005, 09:58 PM

anyone ever thrown a dance party with an ipod hooked up to your bass amp?

i ask as i am planning one,

i hook my ipod up to my other bass amp, my kustom with a 1/8inch male to 1/4 inch female adapter, and play along to music,

i just tried it out on my 100 watt crate bx-100 yesterday, and i must say it seems to work well, plus with like a 9 band EQ, i can control the bass....

and its pretty loud and bassy, only turned halfway up on both gain and level...

any problems i should know about/run into?

Selta · #2 08-14-2005, 10:01 PM

For my dorm room I had hooked up my PC to my Ash 1x15 cab to use as a subwoofer. Didn't work THAT great, but better than a lot of the other ones I was hearing at my school. Just listen to mostly the speaker and make sure you're not killing it. It probably wont sound too too great though, since it's a bass amp designed for bass, and not full range PA type stuff, but it'll get the job done.

-Ray

bassontherun · #3 08-15-2005, 02:22 PM

Unless you run across any unusal noise that would be a detraction from the party, this ought to work real well! Specifically, some CD players (this probably doesn't apply to the iPod) have a small "beep" when turned on and off / forward-reverse. This is HIGHLY amplified when running the CD player in to an amp. Trust me, you'll only want to hear it once! As well, be sure to run the proper output and adaptor (stereo out from the iPod with a stereo-to-mono adaptor before going into the amp). In some cases, you may lose one of the two stereo channels if not adapted correctly. In this case, you'll notice some of the song missing (I lose Eddie's lead channel on Van Halen tunes). I found a nice setup at Radio Shack. I use a 6' male to male 1/8" stereo cable out of the laptop (or iPod in your case) and a 1/8" stereo female-to-1/4" mono male adaptor (yep, Radio Shack carries one of these little lifesavers!) going into the amp.

I've run CD players and my laptop into a variety of amps (guitar, bass and PA) with great results. I recently moved to a Behringer KX1200 as a small/medium club gig amp so that I could cut down on my gear and have (4) independent input channels. For a recent small outdoor party, I ran my laptop (MP3's) into two channels (1/8" stereo out of the laptop to (2) mono 1/4" inputs) of the KX1200. Set the EQ flat and had some of the best sound (both volume and tone) that I've ever had out of a combo. It was WAY beyond what I thought it could do!

I've used my bass amps coupled with a CD player on several occasions to play intermission music during gigs (the PA will often do a better job, but you may find that you don't have enough PA inputs or going through your bass amp is easier).

In the end, PA, home stereo, guitar, keyboard and bass amps are similar animals. The biggest difference is how they are "voiced" electronically. Essentially you would need to EQ each differently to get similar sounds. Otherwise, most will work well for broadcast applications.

Wesley R · #4 08-15-2005, 02:26 PM

with an 8 track, 1 chnl to an AMpeg Bass amp and other to an Ampeg VT-22.

Best of Luck,
Wesley R

steveksux · #5 08-15-2005, 04:54 PM

I actually did that for a party at my house, split my power amp from bridge mono to stereo, used an EA vl-210 for each channel. It sounded great, those EA cabs are actually pretty flat full range cabs. I was amazed. Used a mixer to take R/L inputs from CD player and pan them to the correct power amp channel.

Randy

GetLow · #6 08-15-2005, 09:14 PM

it'll work. in fact, i do it all the time. you must make sure that you don't clip the preamp (the ipod sends a pretty hot signal). so you might want to use a pad button if you got one, or just keep the preamp volume down.

also, you can use a 1/8 male to a 1/4 male... it doesn't have to be female...