Closed back “guitar” cabinet?

[tleeitsme]

Alrighty I’m probably going to be spouting a little bit of heresy but I am curious as to if a little guitar amp will work for my bass. Its a 15 watt all-tube head running through a 1x12 closed back cabinet rated at 60w. Running a bass through a guitar head is nothing new but many people claim it has to be through a bass cabinet, but I have read conflicting information that back in the 60s guitar players and bass players alike used the same cabinets for amps. So is it fine as long as the cabinet is closed backed and the wattage output of the speaker is much higher than the amp? Or am I way off base?

obviously this isnt optimal but I am really just looking for a small tube bedroom setup. I have a 5w head from the same manufacturer that I love the sound of but I am nervous plugging my bass into it because it has an open back cabinet (with the same 60w celestion).

Thanks for any input!

 

[Crater]

At fifteen watts, you'll probably be OK, but no promises. Keep the volume and especially the bass level reasonable and you should be fine.

 

[FunkHead]

Sealed guitar 12's sound fantastic with bass!

 

[Redbrangus]

The answer, like for so many things, is 'it depends'. Technically you can play bass through almost anything if you do it quietly enough. There's no reason not to try that amp and speaker combo, as long as you approach it with some measure of caution. Don't plug in and start off with it cranked way up--start with it turned completely down and advance the volume slowly while playing to see how it goes. If you don't hear any obvious sounds of the speaker crapping out, you're probably OK to use it at a low practice volume.

It's true that some players in the 50's used open-backed guitar amps, in part because there wasn't much else available. The early Fender Bassman 410's were open-backed, for instance, but it was because they didn't know any better, and that vintage amp is definitely NOT prized as a bass amp, but as a guitar and harp amp. After 1960, the Bassmans were piggy-backs w/ closed cabs, but there wasn't any real difference between a Bassman amp and the other amps in the Fender line--the preamp and amp circuits are all pretty much the same. By the time the 60's came along, most folks had figured out that bass cabs needed to be closed; that doesn't mean that players weren't forced by circumstances to use sub-optimal rigs like guitar amps. Plus, in a studio, for instance, where things can be close-mic'd, you can use all kinds of things as a bass amp, including a Twin, for instance. But that doesn't mean you can use one at show volume.

It's probably best to take axiomatic wisdom like "sealed guitar 12's sound fantastic for bass" with a grain of salt; there are too many variable factors involved for any broad statement like that to hold true in a lot of different cases. In the mid-to-late 60's, when I was first learning something about the bass, it was popular wisdom in my area that you could play bass through any guitar amp as long as it had at least a 12" speaker. We didn't really observe any niceties like whether or not it was closed-back. But again, we didn't know any better back then--thanks to the miracles of language and the Internet, we can all benefit from the knowledge hard-earned by the early pioneers in bass-dom and speaker-craft.

 

[two fingers]

The guitar speaker is a toss up. It might sound great, might not. It also might handle low frequencies, might not.

But here's the thing. If it doesn't sound amazing, you can still slap a bass speaker in there and it'll be fine. Just measure the INSIDE dimensions of the cab. Call US Speaker and give them those dimensions. They'll give you options of speakers that will work with those dimensions.