Mixer to bass amp?

[Kügel]

Not sure where to put this question but I figured this might be the best bet to get a good answer.

So I recently bought an Arturia Microbrute and a Behringer Xenyx 1002FX. I'm getting an experimental drone setup together which would consist of the Microbrute, a sampler and a drone pedal + delay all hooked into the mixer.

My main question is; can I send the main out of the mixer to the input of my bass amp ('78 Fender Bassman) for live purposes? Can I damage anything this way?

A few other questions; can I connect everything to the mixer and just listen through headphones with having monitors attached to the mixer?

And more in regards to recording; should I use the main outs or the headphones out to hook it up to my audio interface for recording?

Thanks!

 

[mrmills]

You won't damage anything connecting the desk to the amp, it is akin to plugging a hot active bass into it.

You can listen to everything without monitors attached.

Main outs would probably be best for recording.

 

[okcrum]

Your mixer has tape outputs, so you can use those for recording since you're feeding the bass amp from the mains.

 

[Zooberwerx]

Does the '78 Bassman have any type of loop: FX, pre out, power amp in? If so, I would run the mixer directly into the FX return or power amp in bypassing the tone section. Then again, it may be perfectly acceptable, tone-wise / gain-wise, to run directly through the front end. Use caution and you won't harm anything by experimenting. Sounds like a fun project.

Riis

 

[grbr]

Kügel I'd be interested in hearing how things turn out for you. I'm in a similar situation, as I use a few noise machines/synths alongside a Roland SH2 analog synth all plugged into a small Behringer mixer. Until now, I had always plugged the mixer output into the PA but now I'm getting a bass amp.

A sound engineer told me that there could be sound quality issues: instead of plugging the the mixer output directly into a bass amp, I should use a reamp pedal to reduce the impedance.

 

[ngh]

using a reamp would be the kosher way of doing it, that being said, I think most bass amps would be fine getting a line level signal into the front end, will definitely eat up your headroom though.

 

[grbr]

Thanks ngh. If one wanted to try out the kosher way, is there any affordable gear you'd recommend? This guide says adapters (such as those made by Reamp or Radial Engineering) OR passive DIs can do the trick.

 

[bongomania]

Those adapters are what he meant by "a reamp". A passive DI turned backwards works great as a reamp.

The main "sound quality" issue that could happen is distortion from lack of headroom. So you can totally solve that issue without any adapters just by turning down the volume on the line level device.

The one other tiny fine point is that the tone may be different between an active device (like a mixer) and a passive guitar/bass, going into the same amp. The passive one could be darker, depending on a variety of factors. The reamp devices can bring back some of that darkness.

 

[grbr]

Okay, thanks for that clarification! Will just have to wait till I get my amp to hear the result and play around with the mixer output level, then see if how necessary it is to resort to a reamp device.

(Sorry Kügel for hijacking your thread, hope this is interesting to you too)