Practicing without an amp?

[cloverkeys]

I have a Vox amPlug. It cost me $50 and can fit in my purse. I bought it for when I travel.

I've been interested in these.

How many hours of play you get out of the batteries?

 

[mkmsound]

Tascam GB-10

$92 at Amazon.

Batteries or ac

transpose, change speed, loop

also records

 

[mambo4]

I do about 99.9% of my practicing unplugged, no headphones, nothing but bass. How loud do you really need to be?

I suppose if you used effects that wouldn't work out so well.

You can practice fingering patterns for scales, chord arpeggios , songs and riffs unplugged.

But there are important things that hearing yourself at volume can aid greatly: general articulation and dynamics, working on a light touch (both hands), hearing when unplucked strings are ringing so you can mute them, determining if rattles and finger squeaks are actually making it into the amp, and so forth.

 

[Fergie Fulton]

One of the best things I can recommend is to find some polystyrene and jam it on your headstock and play to the resonate sound of your bass.
If you can find some packing check it out to see if it fits.
If you find some that was the side packing, it is normally hollowed out.
Tape some grease proof paper really tight over the hollow and it will act as a resonator. To hear your basses resonant sound teaches you more about how you play and also how hard you play. It teaches you to create sustain and slight vibrato in your playing from source....rather than being helped by an amp.

To hear it without the polystyrene, just touch the headstock against a door and hear the sound, different materials and woods create louder and different sounds.

 

[Ric5]

Hi all,

It is possible to practice without being tied to an amp?

Can I plug my bass into a pair of headphones?

Or can I route it through an iPhone and then into a pair of headphones?

Any thoughts?

Get one of these ...

 

[DonaldR]

+1 for Amplitube (Ampger SVT) and iRig on iPhone. Most "portable" and cheap ($50). I use also PocketGK Lite (free) but a bit noisy.

Best "cheap" sound for practice is Line6 Toneport GX ($80), comes with Podfarm (18 guitar amps, and 5 bass amps). Line6 bass models (Ampeg SVT, GK 800R and Eden Traveller) are very very good.

I use Shure E2 in-ear and I totally enjoy it.

GK MB200 has headphone out + aux-in and is totally light and portable.

 

[rashbeep]

"Most of the time i don't plug into anything, depending on what I am trying to accomplish. Actually for the last 8 months i was away on business and didn't even have an amp and i still played my Fender Jazz acoustically lol

I am just practicing fretting or plucking i don't even care what it sounds like, because its just useless anyway. If your fretting scales you don't really need to hear the note just know that you fret and pluck correctly. Put a movie on, and enjoy!"

I'm prety sure if I did this I'd develop soem pretty bad habits like not damping opne strings and too much pressure on the fretboard. I switch to headphones once in a while to listen closer to my bad habits. In the summer, it's too hot to get under cans much of the time and I practice through a little Rumble amp and even that hides a lot of poor technique. I can't imagine what playing acoustically for a few months would do.
But that's me and I'm just learning and don't have good habits engrained.

i didn't have an amp for the majority of the 7 years i've played bass.

i'm currently looking for something like what is being recommended in this thread. something that can record, connect to headphones and also have some various drum presets.

 

[Jazzkuma]

Practice with an amp but its not a big deal to practice without one. The only concern is being able to hear your tone and sound. Our tone and sound is about 90% in our hands and 10% in gear but you want to develope a good tone for your gear combination. You also want to feel comfortable with different amps.