Difference Between Guitar Amps & Bass Amps

While you are taking guitar classes in El Dorado Hills, you will get to know a little about what actually differentiates bass amps from guitar amps under the hood. Though they may look very similar – huge, heavy boxes covered with silver or black grills – bass and guitar amps have a few key differences that can result in substantial dissimilarities in safety and tone.

The most obvious difference between bass and guitar amps lies in the speaker. Based on the size of the amp, guitar amps usually feature a speak3er anywhere from 8" to 12" in diameter. These speakers all have their own EQ signatures – in simple English, this signifies they are all bespoke to deliver a different sound to some extent, with varying emphasis on the treble frequencies, mids, and bass ranges.

The smaller speaker size even signifies that guitar amps are only capable of a different range of frequencies than bass amps. An open E note, the lowest frequency turned out by a guitar in standard tuning, sounds at around 82 Hz – the majority of guitar speakers are optimized for ranges down to 80 Hz to accommodate this low end.

The highest basic note the majority of guitars can turn out lies merely shy of 1,200 Hz, which is a note at the 22nd fret on the high E string. However, while taking guitar classes in El Dorado Hills, you will come to know that the majority of guitars can often generate sounds at frequencies up to 5,000 Hz, thanks to overtones and other higher reverberating sounds. The majority of speakers in guitar amplifiers, as a result, top out around the 5,000 – 5,500 Hz range.

Bass amps, in the meantime, specialize in much lower frequencies and put less effort into higher sounds. Larger speakers deliver more low-end output power. A few bass amplifiers will make use of 10" speakers, but 15" speakers are the most common size and even 18" speakers are not unheard of. Bass speakers carry their own EQ signatures as well, which have a tendency to favor lower, louder sounds over exact and clear notes.

To successfully amplify a bass and offer headroom prior to the signal starts to distort, a lot of speakers on bass amplifiers can accommodate frequencies as low as 20 or 30 Hz. The top end of the range lies around 2,000 Hz on the majority of bass amplifiers, with a few going even lower.

Safety Concerns

Safety is obviously the biggest worry while making an effort to plug a bass into a guitar amp. Will the lower frequencies fry the amp circuit? Will the speaker give out under the surplus load? The reply depends on a couple of key factors.

Your playing volume will mainly decide whether or not it is safe to run the bass via a guitar amp. While taking guitar classes in El Dorado Hills, you will come to know that, at low volumes, you are supposed be capable of getting away with plugging into a mid-sized guitar amplifier, particularly if you lay emphasis on the higher strings and stay away from the lowest available notes.