PRS guitar amp as a bass amp?

[daveyisgreat]

Hey everyone! I have a PRS Original Sewell amp (circa 2009) and I love it! It sounds so killer, and it's a great complement to my other amp.

So I've been listening to a lot of older Muse stuff the last several days (since I saw them play on Download 2015 on Palladia channel) and I got to thinking, the sound of the driving bass line in the song Hysteria kinda reminds me of my PRS amp! Strange thought for sure, but then I got to thinking, maybe when I get a chance I'll bust out my old bass and run it through that amp and go to town on some killer modern rock fuzz bass riffs!

So, has anyone here on this here forum ever run a bass through their PRS guitar amp? I'm eager to try it...

 

[Jazzedout]

It wouldn't hurt to try it and see if you like it...

 

[Mixstar]

Try it but don't turn the wick up too much while you're testing, the speakers may be the biggest issue. I once took out a Celestion on a 2 x 12 cab doing exactly the same thing.

 

[Dusty Chalk]

Please report back with your findings. I'm not quite bass low, but I play a seven-string through 4x10 cabs powered by PRS amps (Archon, MDT), and am quite happy with the results.

 

[ChrisCst22]

I always recommend keeping bass and guitar to their specific amplifiers. However, kept to bedroom/practicing levels, you shouldn't have a problem. It would be gigging levels that would really concern me.

Damaging the amplifier is fairly low-risk, but not impossible. The bigger concern would be the speaker. Of course your result will have many variables. Higher wattage speakers would obviously be able to handle it better than low ones.

Just my .02$ for what it's worth!

 

[justmund]

Pretty sure Hysteria was done with an Akai Deep Impact SB-1 and an overdrive as well? I seem to remember the second hand market going nuts for that pedal once Muse got a bit more popular...

 

[WEDGE]

It works for Lemmy :rock:

 

[László]

As others have said, the risk is the speakers that aren't designed to take a lot of power from a bass. The head should be fine.

 

[Mixstar]

It's the frequency melts the speaker coils if driven too hard.

 

[G-Man]

Interesting question. I would say it is easier to use a bass amp for guitar than a guitar amp for bass. Best example is the F brand Bassman which was designed as a bass amp that guitarists lathed onto the sound. and some of the early Ampeg SVT stuff which were used for both. Example here is Billy Sheehan who plays bass and uses a hip-shot with to go lower but also has a ton of high frequency volume in his playing, almost guitar like. Tony Levin - same thing with the Chapman stick. I think he also has Ampeg somewhere in the chain.

As far as blowing speakers go, two culprits are the worst, clipping and over extension. Frequency usually causes two problems with speakers, the bass causes too much extension and "bottoms out" the voice coil which prevents it from gliding back and fourth within the magnet structure or a separation of the voice coil from the actual speaker spider itself. No real melting there, a more mechanical failure. Where the melting occurs is when the amp is so over driven that it clips and generates "square wave" which fries voice coils and blows speakers. Really not frequency driven. Most blown speakers are caused by underpowered amps clipping hard and taking out the speaker vs. higher clean power over powering a speaker, within reason of course.

I know where this is going about distortion when it comes from guitar amps. My thought is that if the pre-amp stage is making most of this distortion what ever you call it, crunch, sag, thrash, blistering metal etc. you are ok because all you are asking the amp stage to do is reproduce what the preamp, the effects or the pickups are producing. When you are relying on the amp stage to provide that breakup, you do get into some flakey type situations where you have to be more careful.

I could be totally off bases so please correct me if I'm nuts.

 

[AP515]

I've done it. It works fine at low volumes. I haven't tried gig volumes and I won't because of the speaker cones. The low frequencies will tear the cones up.

 

[veinbuster]

The amp won't care, and might sound quite good. I played bass through a guitar amp at quite a few venues BUT I played it through a 4x10 bass cabinet or a 2x15 bass cabinet.

 

[daveyisgreat]

Way cool, thanks for the responses! Maybe I'll just snatch up an inexpensive used bass cab and go to town on that thing! Way cool junior indeed.