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Playing electric guitar through bass rig

theophilus762

theophilus762

Nov 4, 2006
1,342
43
39
Arlington, VA
#1
Whats up guys,

So one of my friends wanted to learn guitar so I gave her my cheap Rogue acoustic. Only problem is, as much as I love bass, there are moments when I do have the urge to play a couple songs on a guitar. I was thinking about just getting another acoustic, but I thought of this:

How about getting an SX electric guitar?!

My friend recently received his SX strat, and its built extremely well, just as good, if not better than my SX SPJ-62. It'll probably play better than any $100 acoustic guitar too. I've also been thinking about picking one up anyways, and nows the perfect opportunity.

Only problem is, I'd like to be able to hear it, even if it's in my room.

Would I run into any issues playing it through my rig? I've let my friends play their electrics through it at very low gain thinking it'd be harmless. Playing a bass through an electric guitar amp would definitely be dangerous, but I don't think there'd be any consequences of doing it the other way around. Btw, I run a LMII into an Aguilar S210 or S410.

What do you guys think?
 
#3
Ron Now said:
I run guitars through bass amps all the time. I usually prefer it actually. My band has 8 amps running on stage and 5 or 6 of them are bass amps, yet I am the only who plays bass.
Click to expand...

wow, thats actually really interesting. :eyebrow:

Could you elaborate on why you prefer bass amps, and how you convinced your guitards to play through bass amps rather than electric guitar amplifiers?
 
#4
A guitar through a bass amp will cause no problems. I've heard of guys who back in the day did it all the time to get a bigger sound. The opposite is not true however. A bass will blow up a guitar amp. Case in point: I went into a pawn shop once to pawn my bass (you know, I was a REAL starving artist LOL) and the guy wanted to see if the active pickups worked. The only amp he had was a Peavey guitar amp of some kind. He went to plug it in and I advised him not to, but he gave me one of the "I work in a pawn shop that sells guitars, so I must know more than you" looks. He plugged it in and hit a low E and the little amp made a split-second blurrp and then a wicked BUZZ as the paper separated from the cone. I laughed as he tried to play it off as if nothing happened. :D
 
#5
motleystew said:
A guitar through a bass amp will cause no problems. I've heard of guys who back in the day did it all the time to get a bigger sound. The opposite is not true however. A bass will blow up a guitar amp. Case in point: I went into a pawn shop once to pawn my bass (you know, I was a REAL starving artist LOL) and the guy wanted to see if the active pickups worked. The only amp he had was a Peavey guitar amp of some kind. He went to plug it in and I advised him not to, but he gave me one of the "I work in a pawn shop that sells guitars, so I must know more than you" looks. He plugged it in and hit a low E and the little amp made a split-second blurrp and then a wicked BUZZ as the paper separated from the cone. I laughed as he tried to play it off as if nothing happened. :D
Click to expand...


ROFL ROFL ROFL:D
 
#6
That's weird, I've played my peavey bass through a little electric guitar amp (a very cheap version of this POS -http://www.musiciansfriend.com/product/Randall-RX15-12Watt-1x6.5-Combo-Amp?sku=481259) with max gain, volume, everything as loud and high as it would go and the little thing actually held up rather well.
 
#7
I too also like the sound of my guitar through my bass amp. I started out on guitar and have a nice little 15w Crate tube amp and put high gain JJ's in it. It started out as laziness (hooking up to the Crate and having to wait for it to warm up) but I started to like the extra boom from the 15" speaker and I got an extra bit of crisp to my tone that I liked. Unfortunately the only use my Crate gets now is when my friend comes over and we jam or when I feel bad letting $300 sit there on the floor all day.
 
#10
The only problem with running a bass through a guitar amp is that the speakers can't handle the low frequencies. There would be no problem running a guitar through a bass amp. I actually do it quite a bit, I have a Yamaha BBT500H and it's got some pretty decent overdrive/distortion when used on guitar.
 
#11
I too prefer guitar through a bass amp. It sounds much more full, and has a definition that I find lacking in guitar cabs. Just make sure to turn the tweeter off, guitar through a tweeter sounds aweful IMO.

As for bass through a guitar cab... for the most part you'll damage guitar speakers with bass but that's not entirely true either. I've played bass through my vintage Traynor TS-200 head and TS-98 cab and find the tone quite favorable. I've played it loud and the speakers never seem to wince or show any signs of the bass being to much for it.

There are a lot of bass players out there who use guitar cabs in their set ups and not all of them bi-amp either. I believe in theory that a bass will damage a guitar cab but it's not nessesarly true. I think the design of the cab has a lot to do with it.

Peace

-Benny
 

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