Will bass amps ever be obsolete?

[JimmyM]

hoo boy, you're not exactly selling me on the iem's i get snagged on enough stuff as it is.

anyway, i guess we've answered the original question...no, amps are in no danger of becoming obsolete. not even close.

 

[mentalpatient]

If all there ever was is them iPhone/mp3 headphone techno gizmo heads who don't know what real bass is and only know their garageband electro synth music and never leave the seat in front of their internet, then yes.

 

[Remguy]

Tired of lugging 700 watts around as stage amplifier/rehearsal amp. Buying a Shuttle or Markbass. Old guy = money, yes - spine, no

 

[Count Bassie]

I'm in a different situation than many of the players on TB. I play without a drummer, and in an acoustic rock / acoustic country set of genres.

We also have a very good PA and a dedicated sound woman.

Aha! There you go, kind of a different animal altogether. I do a few acoustic gigs with upright once in a while, and all I want there is to hear the bass.

 

[Count Bassie]

Tired of lugging 700 watts around as stage amplifier/rehearsal amp. Buying a Shuttle or Markbass. Old guy = money, yes - spine, no

Spine doesn't equate with machismo. Do what you gotta do man! There are some small-but-punchy, air-pushing rigs out there. My 2 Bag End S15-D cabs with a GK 400RB is a great sounding surprise in a small package. Get a roller-cart for it and you're at a minimum compromise situation for most situations:

Point here is the cabs...

 

[DLEE]

I'm actually running the merch table for a Little River Band show. Bass player/lead vocalist has amazing tone, full deep and sparkly. And GUESS WHAT? No bass rig, a few pedals on the floor, a fresh set of strings and a good front of house engineer.

I caught them a couple of years back here at a smaller amphitheatre.Absolutely amazing sound.I noticed the guitarists each had a rolling rack set up with POD Pro's in them. Same thing with a Beatles tribute band here.In ears,dummy Vox boxes behind them. When singing they could stand a foot from the mic's with crystal clear clarity. On a local level I believe amps will always be used just because that's how it's always been. But when Taylor Swift says we don't use amps,guess what? You ain't gonna use an amp.In the big market Enormo Dome Amphi Barn circuit I could very well see them becoming obsolete. In truth how many of us are ever going to achieve this level. Keep your amp until your multi platinum selling boss tells you not to.

 

[Count Bassie]

I caught them a couple of years back here at a smaller amphitheatre.Absolutely amazing sound.I noticed the guitarists each had a rolling rack set up with POD Pro's in them. Same thing with a Beatles tribute band here.In ears,dummy Vox boxes behind them. When singing they could stand a foot from the mic's with crystal clear clarity. On a local level I believe amps will always be used just because that's how it's always been. But when Taylor Swift says we don't use amps,guess what? You ain't gonna use an amp.In the big market Enormo Dome Amphi Barn circuit I could very well see them becoming obsolete. In truth how many of us are ever going to achieve this level. Keep your amp until your multi platinum selling boss tells you not to.

And then keep it anyway... You never know when you're going to get a wild hair and do a local bang-up gig!

Would you give up your Fender bass if you got a gig with a pointy-guitar metal band? I trow not...

 

[biff malibu]

Unless of course your usual sound is nothing like what a clean DI would be. Then it's the incorrect approach.

Would you ever get a guitarist who likes his sound nice and crunchy to go DI instead of through overdriven tube amp?

good point. however this may bring up the argument of the difference between crunchy direct (pod, sansamp, etc...) and a rat through an svt being negligable to anyone except you. if the concern is moving air...wedges and sidefills do that.

i will not disagree that there is a certain magic about opening up a 300 watt tube amp....its just that its not all that practical when you think about it...unless you are playing places with ****** PA.


what i mean by not practical is roughly:

80 pound head, 8x10, clobbering the stage mix or being a low volume extra monitor.

direct, get even stage mix, no volume wars, sounds different to you and only you.

 

[biff malibu]

also, for what its worth, i was playing bass on stage at house of blues through their house svt 810 rig...i couldnt hear the ampeg at all. the stage pretty much ate up the rig (big stage area, wooden deck, big curtains)...but i could hear everything wonderfully through the wedges and sidefills. its usually like that on big stages with great PA and soundmen, in my experience of playing theaters and such.

 

[JimmyM]

good point. however this may bring up the argument of the difference between crunchy direct (pod, sansamp, etc...) and a rat through an svt being negligable to anyone except you. if the concern is moving air...wedges and sidefills do that.

i will not disagree that there is a certain magic about opening up a 300 watt tube amp....its just that its not all that practical when you think about it...unless you are playing places with ****** PA.

neither is playing music. probably one of the least practical activities out there. sure, it's fun, but not for the practical-minded.

what i mean by not practical is roughly:

80 pound head, 8x10, clobbering the stage mix or being a low volume extra monitor.

direct, get even stage mix, no volume wars, sounds different to you and only you.

i would disagree with that. the first time i brought my svt to a gig in 11 years, i had people who know nothing about playing music say to me how much more present and fat the bass was. and this was with a pretty good pa. and besides, if i notice the difference, there's a difference.

that said, running ampless through the pa is a perfectly legit way of doing it for some people. it just isn't for me. and considering i've got limited svt years left in me, i'm going to make the best of them.

 

[biff malibu]

Thank you. If you had read the whole thing, you would notice that I admit it isn't necessarily that important to tone, or is even that useful, but as has been discussed in another thread, to many there is still an image connected to Rock. I'm not saying it needed for good sound, but many still associate Rock with loud, raucous, bands and a stage full of amps. Weird concept, I know.

that association of loud and rock has nothing to do with the amps on stage. it has everything to do with the PA. unless you are playing a backyard party or a coffee shop with some little stick PA in which case you arent going to be "bringing the rock" in that environment anyways. you may think you are....but you arent.



also, your choice in gear has nothing to do with your level of creativity...to the guy who was talking about "getting the job done, left brain, right brain, etc..."

 

[Govier966]

i dont think they will become obsolete for practice.

 

[JimmyM]

also, for what its worth, i was playing bass on stage at house of blues through their house svt 810 rig...i couldnt hear the ampeg at all. the stage pretty much ate up the rig (big stage area, wooden deck, big curtains)...but i could hear everything wonderfully through the wedges and sidefills. its usually like that on big stages with great PA and soundmen, in my experience of playing theaters and such.

sounds like the subs were drowning out the low end. it'll happen sometimes. monitors i hate because i only want my vocal in it. sidefills i don't mind so much. but we rarely have them and bowzer hates having anything in them except his voice. so i just boost mids and highs and cut lows and i'm set.

 

[modulusman]

sounds like the subs were drowning out the low end. it'll happen sometimes. monitors i hate because i only want my vocal in it. sidefills i don't mind so much. but we rarely have them and bowzer hates having anything in them except his voice. so i just boost mids and highs and cut lows and i'm set.

Well Jimmy I played the sub gig last night with my shuttle combo and it was fine. The PA was just a pair of Peavey SP-2s. I ran a line out from the head to the PA but was just barely in the mains. i had my master volume at about half way and was plenty loud. I am really impressed with this amp.

 

[JimmyM]

ya, i figured it would be fine. that's a loud little bugger. toneful, too. i just like the sound of more than one woofer and i think it adds some nice beef to your tone to have it.

 

[D.M.N.]

that association of loud and rock has nothing to do with the amps on stage. it has everything to do with the PA. unless you are playing a backyard party or a coffee shop with some little stick PA in which case you arent going to be "bringing the rock" in that environment anyways. you may think you are....but you arent.

Alright, let's go through this again.

you're fooling yourself if you think looks don't count. play a formal jazz gig where everyone's wearing tuxes and you wear a t-shirt and sandals. or play a rock gig where everyone wears t-shirts and sneakers and you wear a tux. or play with devo where everyone wears a yellow hazmat suit and you wear anything else but the yellow suit.

now use that logic with amps...show up to an allman bros gig with no amp, or show up to an ampless gig with an svt...see how quickly it takes for you to be shown the door.

looks count a great deal. those who don't believe looks count usually end up not getting many gigs.

also, regarding an earlier comment...maybe for you and mama dave the amp is just a monitor. well i tried that route the last couple weeks and it isn't working for me. i don't like the sound, so i'm going back to using a mic on my amp, which makes it way more than a stage monitor...it makes it the way i get my sound to the crowd. and any soundman who complains i'm too loud is incompetent. i am NEVER too loud

so as you can see, the actual answer is "do what you think is best."

Seriously, I don't understand why that is hard to grasp. Look at hair metal. That OBVIOUSLY wasn't about the look or performance was it? Would you show up to a punk show dressed in a nice button up shirt and slacks, and use your DI? We have local bands that do "rock/blues", and they're all really good musicians, but they are boring: partly because they've been playing the same songs for the last three thousand years, but a large part of it is that they have no image. They wear the same stuff they do offstage and use either DI or a tiny bedroom amp into the PA. They don't put on a show, at all. That IS part of it, and for hard rock, amps ARE part of the look. REALLY.

As far as brining the rock and telling me that I'm not brining it, you can ask the wedding we played at last night. I think they'd agree the rock was brought.

But as I bolded above, it's your thing, do what you want.

 

[SteveC]

As far as bringing the rock and telling me that I'm not bringing it, you can ask the wedding we played at last night. I think they'd agree the rock was brought.

Well, we DI everything and they seemed to like us at the weddings we've played, too.

Whatever works best.

 

[BassmanPaul]

Why don't you take this premise further and ask will guitar amps ever be obsolete? I don't personally know of one guitar player who would perform without his, usually tube, amplifier and speakers. My feeling is that my speaker systems are as part of "my sound" as my basses and amplifiers. I've used IEMs, Shure E4s, and while they worked well I didn't sound like me.

Paul

 

[Korladis]

good point. however this may bring up the argument of the difference between crunchy direct (pod, sansamp, etc...) and a rat through an svt being negligable to anyone except you. if the concern is moving air...wedges and sidefills do that.

i will not disagree that there is a certain magic about opening up a 300 watt tube amp....its just that its not all that practical when you think about it...unless you are playing places with ****** PA.


what i mean by not practical is roughly:

80 pound head, 8x10, clobbering the stage mix or being a low volume extra monitor.

direct, get even stage mix, no volume wars, sounds different to you and only you.

To me and the band, you mean. All the instruments (except drums and vocals, obviously) in my band are EQed to work with each other. Change one and the rest don't make sense. I'll be happy about being forced to go through a DI the day a guitarist is similarly cheerful about such a circumstance. I don't just "fill out the bottom end". The concern isn't about "moving air." It's about being heard, rather than just felt. My normally biting, mid-heavy tone being turned by the soundman into low end rumbly mush is going to have an effect on the rest of the band, who are, of course, used to being able to hear what I'm playing quite clearly, rather than mostly feeling it.

I play mainly in a metal band. Which means that yes, I am playing places with **** PA's. I'm not playing in a bar cover band, and have a somewhat unconventional approach to bass sound, in an occasionally rather weird band.

Clean DI sound just doesn't work with our approach. Also, my head is 45 pounds (60-65 including the wooden case I made for it), not 80. And I don't play through an 810.

Typically, at shows I've been to, when the bassist uses a DI, the bass sound is just complete mud, an indiscernible rumble that completely fails to have any note definition in the mix of two heavily distorted guitars.

 

[Korladis]

Why don't you take this premise further and ask will guitar amps ever be obsolete? I don't personally know of one guitar player who would perform without his, usually tube, amplifier and speakers. My feeling is that my speaker systems are as part of "my sound" as my basses and amplifiers. I've used IEMs, Shure E4s, and while they worked well I didn't sound like me.

Paul

Completely agree. And why not take it further. Perhaps houses should have their own basses that they make everyone who plays there use?

To me it sounds about the same as forcing me to use a DI into their board rather than putting a mic in front of the cab or at least taking it from the back of the amp. My amp is as much part of what I consider to be my instrument as my bass is. In terms of actual sound (obviously, playability is more a concern with basses than amps), maybe moreso, as the sound changes less when I use a different bass with the same amp than it does when I use the same bass with a different amp.