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Guitar running through a bass amp?

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Thrillho:
The opposite is true, putting a bass through a guitar amp would fuck it over. Putting a guitar through a bass amp is like running something at half capacity.

ASturge:
yeah, everyone's said it, but its all good!

Actually, my old band's bassist used a guitar amp with his bass to get this distorted bass sound not unlike a dog barking. Sounded awesome until the amp got fried and stopped working

JoshH:
Hi long time lurker, first time poster.

Yes a guitar through a bass amp will do it no damage, but it will also sound like turd.
If you do this you will find the eq settings will do little to nothing to improve your sound and mostly it will just be adding things to your sound most guitarist try to get rid of.  Plus being a bass amp and only worth a couple hundred, it's probably a solid state amp and they are notoriously bad for guitar tone.

Hope this helps.

bucky_2300:

--- Quote from: timehat ---I believe the Fender Bassman is usually sought by guitarists, although its original purpose was as a bass amp.
--- End quote ---


Fender Bassman amps have a "Bass Instrument Input" and a "Normal Instrument Input." (Normal on right in photo.)



They aren't strictly bass amps.

As for just running a guitar through a pure bass amp being bad for it, not so. You will sound like ass, because bass amps are built to deal with the normal ranges of and produce the best sound for...you guessed it, bass guitars. So you will have to do some uber EQing to get those top-end notes heard, because a bass' range is so much lower than a guitar's.

Therein can lie the suspicion that it can be bad for the amp. If you're just using the amp's EQ, you're fine. But sometimes if you're running things like high-gain distortion pedals or EQ pedals to boost your top end, it can feel like you're telling the amp to do something it is not made to do, which is bad for it. It isn't usually, but just pay attention to it, and if it starts making weird noises, stop using it.


However, running a bass into a guitar amp is a bad idea. Basses have a higher output than guitars, which can drive the amp very hard, and then adding the extreme amounts of bass frequencies being shoved into the guitar can do no small amount of harm to the amp. Be careful!


--- Quote from: ASturge ---Actually, my old band's bassist used a guitar amp with his bass to get this distorted bass sound not unlike a dog barking. Sounded awesome until the amp got fried and stopped working
--- End quote ---


Case in point. The distorted bass sound was the amp saying "STOP DOING THAT TO ME YOU BLOODY STUPID BASSIST." The reason it sounded like a dog barking and not a normal bass was the amp was being driven so hard that it didn't come out as distortion like a normal hard-driven amp, but rather it was driving it so hard that it was actually destroying the amp bit by bit.

ALoveSupreme:
Actually, as far as sounding like "complete ass", I've heard exactly the opposite.  

Some jazz guitarists use bass amps because off the deep, blue tone that you get out of them.  It has little high end, and that's the draw.  

Depending on what you're going for, it may sound like shit for what you want, but if you want a nice, dark tone for your guitar, a bass amp will work great.

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